I Think It's Going to Rain Today
by akisawana
Summary: It's starting to get scary, how well the Aerialbots are adjusting to being human. The same cannot be said of the Seekers.
1. 1

Title: I Think It's Going to Rain Today 1/?  
Author: akisawana  
Genre: Drama/Family, with guest appearances by Romance, Angst, Crack, and Oh God, Didn't I Swear I'd Never Do This?  
Disclaimer: Insert standard disclaimer here. Transformers? Not mine.  
Warnings: Strip poker.  
Notes: Oy vey. I've had either too much to drink or not nearly enough.  
Summary: The Transformers are human, for no apparent reason. This is not Silverbolt's biggest problem. His brothers are not-so-slowly going insane. This not Silverbolt's biggest problem. Starscream and company have just moved in across the hall. _That's_ Silverbolt's biggest problem.

* * *

Air Raid was a morning person; he saw to it that the rest of his team woke to fresh coffee every morning. Silverbolt wasn't sure what they would do without him. Lose their jobs for tardiness or drive a car into the median, most likely. Air Raid had the five cups lined up on the counter, and was just pouring the milk in them as Silverbolt came out from the shower. Lots of sugar and a splash of milk for him, less sugar and more milk for Air Raid himself, no milk and a single spoon of sugar for Skydive, black with an ice cube for Slingshot, and milk and sugar with just a bit of coffee for color for Fireflight. "Morning, boss," Air Raid said with a smile.

Silverbolt nodded. "It's morning." He claimed his coffee and Fireflight's, and took them over to the couch. Fireflight was curled under a blanket with only his feet sticking out and a bottle of aspirin on the floor in front of him. Silverbolt sat next to him and tugged on the blanket. "Hey. Coffee time."

Fireflight sat up and accepted the coffee. Megatron's latest super weapon had definitely turned him into the cutest Aerialbot by human standards, if not the most attractive. Big blue eyes and round cheeks under unruly blond hair, a bit curly, called attention whenever they went out. Especially if he was alone. Even now, pale and drawn from pain, Silverbolt could see where the comparison to a sparkling was coming from, and sparklings of any species, by and large, demanded attention. Silverbolt wrapped an arm around his shoulders, and Fireflight leaned against him. "I don't like this," he said plaintively.

"I know," Silverbolt said.

"It hurts."

"Did you take any aspirin?"

Fireflight nodded. "At four."

"Four? Did you sleep at all?" Fireflight shook his head and sipped from his coffee. Silverbolt sighed. "At least you have today off," he said. "Do we need to pick up more supplies?"

"Probably," Fireflight replied, fast losing interest in the conversation in favor of staring into his coffee. Silverbolt didn't call his mind back for once, just picked up his own cup and listened to Air Raid try to wake Slingshot. He debated intervening, then decided that whoever survived would just have to hide the body himself.

Skydive came out to claim his own coffee and sit on the couch on Fireflight's other side, his dark hair still wet. He set his free hand on Fireflight's knee. Silverbolt lifted his arm from around Fireflight, who just leaned against Skydive instead, eyes closed. "Work calls," he said, tucking the blanket around his brothers. "I'll bring home more stuff later. Have a good day at school."

"Have fun at work," Skydive said. Fireflight just gave a little wave. Once the door was safely closed behind him, he thanked Primus that out of the Aerialbots, only he and Fireflight had female bodies, and only Fireflight was afflicted by the monthly curse. He'd do anything in his power to make his little brother feel better, of course, but he always gave silent thanks that his own courses ran smooth.

Silverbolt came home, after a mildly stressful but mostly unremarkable day at work and a quick stop at the drugstore, to Fireflight on the couch still and Slingshot lying mostly across him, both watching TV and drinking beer. Air Raid would be home soon, but Skydive had class until eight. Skydive was the only Aerialbot in college, and they had had to give up cable to afford it, but it was that or ask Prime for money, something they did not want to do short of an emergency. Prime had been reluctant to let them leave, but Prowl and Ironhide impressed on him the necessity of scattering the Autobots around the planet in case the Decepticons did not resurface conveniently on the West Coast, and Ratchet had been a surprise supporter in letting the Aerialbots free. Prime hadn't liked it, but had allowed it, only after many, many promises that they would call him if they needed anything, money or reference checks or spiders squished. Silverbolt sank in the chair by the couch and nudged Slingshot with his foot. "How was work?"

"Not fun," he groaned.

"If work was supposed to be fun, they wouldn't call it work," Silverbolt teased. Fireflight grinned, and Slingshot cast his eyes skyward, as if to ask Primus himself for patience.

Slingshot sighed. "Being human blows." He resettled his head on Fireflight's shoulder and added, "Diesel exhaust." Fireflight nodded fervent agreement.

"It's not forever," Silverbolt said.

"It's been eight months," Fireflight said quietly.

"It won't be much longer then," Silverbolt encouraged, but neither of his little brothers believed him. Luckily, Air Raid chose that moment to burst in the door and bound on the couch, kicking off his shoes on the way. He landed half on top of Slingshot, half hanging off the couch. He threw his arms around his smaller brother, partly to keep from falling off the couch, and partly to pull Slingshot over for a noisy kiss on the cheek.

Slingshot pushed him off, but Air Raid carried him to the ground with him. "Get off me, you maniac!"

"Missed you too," Air Raid chirped. He didn't fight Slingshot scrambling on top of him, but he didn't let go either.

"Let me go!"

"What, Fireflight gets snuggles and I don't? I'm jealous, 'Shot!"

"You're insane!"

Silverbolt caught Fireflight's eye and raised his eyebrows. Fireflight cracked up at that, snickering harder when Air Raid pulled Slingshot's head down and scrubbed his knuckles through the smaller man's hair. Slingshot yowled in protest, squirming free and scrambling up. He crossed his arms and glared at his brothers, who barely noticed, too busy laughing themselves sick.

The ringing phone interrupted them. Silverbolt was the first one to get himself under control enough to answer, though it took three rings. "Hello?"

"'Bolt," Skydive said from the other end. "I'm not quite sure how to say this…"

Something in his voice, almost scared, flipped Silverbolt from big-brother to commanding-officer. "Report."

"Starscream is teaching my math class."

"We'll be right there." Silverbolt hung up and turned around. Air Raid and Fireflight had their shoes on, and were helping Slingshot find his missing one. His own Birkenstocks were sitting neatly on the doormat. "Skydive has located the Decepticon Air Commander," he said more calmly than he actually was. His men nodded, and headed out the door. "We're going to meet him at Skydive's school," Silverbolt continued in the elevator. "I'll drive. Slingshot, you take shotgun. We aren't looking to get into a fight, and he shouldn't start anything; we outnumber him. Should it happen, we want to bring him back alive for interrogation. Clear?"

"Crystal," Air Raid said. Slingshot and Fireflight nodded.

"Good." Silverbolt drove, mostly because he had the least points on his license of everyone in the car. Fireflight curled half in Air Raid's lap for the fifteen minute drive in the back seat, still hurting so Silverbolt let it pass. Slingshot didn't take the gun out of the glove box until Silverbolt parked the car in the one-hour parking lot. He shoved it down the front of his pants and checked his wallet to make sure he had his permit on him, just in case. With Skydive's schedule in Silverbolt's datebook in his purse, it was only a matter of reading signs for them to find Skydive's class, a floor up from the door. They settled against the white cinderblock wall across from the door and waited.

When Starscream dismissed the class, the thirty young people left quickly; Skydive was the last one out, and he joined his brothers silently. When Starscream finally emerged, they fell into place behind him without a word.

"I'm too hungry to deal with you now," Starscream said without looking behind him. "If you insist, meet me at the Taco Bell around the corner. I'll be alone." He walked away quickly, boot heels clicking against the floor.

"Well. That certainly went better than the last time we saw him," Air Raid commented, lacing his hands behind his head and walking off.

"It did?" Skydive asked, confused.

"He didn't shoot at us this time, did he?"

The others had to admit that was true. Silverbolt shifted Air Raid to Skydive's car, and they found the Taco Bell with little difficulty. Starscream was the only customer, sitting at a booth far from the door. The Aerialbots ordered food, quickly since there was no line, and sat at his table. To the casual observer, they were simply a group of friends who happened to run into each other. Someone paying more attention might have noticed that Air Raid and Skydive, physically the strongest, had boxed Starscream in and that Slingshot wasn't eating but aiming a gun at Starscream under the table.

If Starscream noticed, he didn't react, eating his nachos with an air of studious unconcern. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"I could ask you the same question," Silverbolt said.

Starscream looked down and began to scrape the remains of the cheese up with one of the last of his chips. "Megatron isn't here. Nor would he look here. The area holds little attraction for his interests."

"And yours?"

"Why am I in The Motor City?" Starscream affected an accent for the epithet, pronouncing it closer to "Murder." He smiled thinly, still concentrating on his food. "My reasons are none of your business, but I assure you it had nothing to do with your presence. It's just a…happy coincidence."

"I don't believe in coincidence when you're involved," Silverbolt said, low. "What are you really doing here?"

Starscream smirked. "Teaching. And if your brother drops the class, you won't even know I'm here." He turned to Air Raid and Skydive. "Let me out," he ordered.

Air Raid and Skydive looked at Silverbolt, who nodded once. They stood and let Starscream pass. "What gives, boss?" Slingshot asked. "We're just going to let him go?"

Silverbolt nodded again. "We don't really have a choice, Slingshot." Slingshot didn't look too happy, but he didn't argue. Silverbolt continued anyways. "He's human now, same as us, and we can't exactly just shoot him when he's done nothing that we know of. There's nothing wrong with teaching calculus."

"Aside from it being a strange and unnatural form of math," Air Raid put in, earning a smile from three brothers.

"Even if he is up to something," Silverbolt said, still smiling, "we can't exactly do anything about it. We'll have to leave it to the authorities." He held up a hand to forestall the protests he knew they would make. "I don't like it any more than you do. But I doubt we'll see him again. Let's go home."

The ride home was more or less silent. Air Raid rode with Skydive and Slingshot home to hear the game, leaving Silverbolt with Fireflight in his front seat. Fireflight spent most of the ride home staring at the taillights of the cars in front of them. "What are you thinking, 'Flight?" Silverbolt asked at the stoplight at the end of the off-ramp. The community college was only seven miles away, but the only way to travel in the Detroit area was on the highway since public transportation didn't exist. Silverbolt's one concession to asking Prime for help was the purchase of extra cars. They had drove one from Washington, but quickly discovered that five people and one car does not work in Michigan. So Silverbolt kept the original station wagon, and Optimus Prime sent them enough money to buy cars cheap off the auction block. Only three, because Fireflight refused to try driving, and try as he might to lie to himself and say he would ask why, Silverbolt just looked the other way and thanked his lucky stars.

"What did you say?" Fireflight asked, turning towards him.

"I was just wondering what you were thinking about."

"Starscream." Fireflight looked back out the window. "He didn't have any bruises. If he was still with Megatron, he'd have bruises."

Silverbolt never questioned Fireflight when it came to noticing things others didn't. Still, he was curious. "Why's that?"

"Megatron almost always hits him when things go wrong. I don't think things have been going very well for the Decepticons lately."

"No, they probably aren't," Silverbolt agreed. "Do you think he was telling the truth?"

"Would he have let us go if he wasn't?"

The other three Aerialbots were standing outside the building when they parked. "Someone's moving in and hogging the elevator," Slingshot explained, sounding none too happy. "We'll have to take the stairs." Seven flights of stairs was not fun for any of them, except for maybe Air Raid who tried to jump from landing to landing ahead of them. Silverbolt and Skydive just rolled their eyes at each other, and then again at Air Raid as he waited somewhat sheepishly at the door for someone with keys. "Hey, whoever's moving in is across the hall," Slingshot said as Silverbolt unlocked the door. The two doors opened at the same time, and their new neighbor came out.

"Hi," Skydive said, waving at him. "We're your new neighbors, I guess." The neighbor, tall and dark, waved back but didn't say anything. Six doors down, the elevator dinged and opened, though no-one in the hall noticed. "I'm Dave," Skydive said, giving his human name, "and this is Robin, Shawn, Ray, and Raven," he continued, pointing at Silverbolt, Slingshot, Air Raid, and Fireflight in turn.

"Nice to meet you," they chorused. The stranger smiled and waved once more before walking to meet another man carrying two boxes from the elevator.

"TC, new rule," a vaguely familiar voice said. The Aerialbots froze in the doorway, each recognizing the voice but unable to place it. "You pack it, you carry it."

"They're not that heavy," an equally familiar voice answered. And it was much more distinctive; no human voice held the echo of sonic booms as Thundercracker's did. As one, the Aerialbots turned. Only one person that they knew of would call the Seeker by nickname, which made the other man in the hallway Skywarp. And if Skywarp and Thundercracker were here, there was little doubt of how far away their commander would be.

Later, much, much later, Air Raid wished for a camera to capture Starscream's and Silverbolt's expressions as they faced each other across the hall.

* * *

True to Starscream's word, the Aerialbots barely saw the Seekers. Skydive dropped the class, and aside from once catching the back of his head, he never saw Starscream on campus. And while having Skywarp and Thundercracker around led to some very awkward elevator rides, they never gave any trouble. Thundercracker even let Fireflight in once when he forgot his keys. Decepticons and Autobots alike settled into an uneasy truce of mutual disregard for nearly a month, until an autumn storm rolled in and knocked out the power. Slingshot answered the door, wondering who it could be. His brothers wouldn't knock, and none of them had made any human friends. He opened the door, flashlight in hand.

"Hey," Skywarp said. "Got an extra one of those?"

"No," Slingshot said. "But come in. You can help us eat the ice cream." He stepped back to allow the Seeker to pass, and locked the door behind him.

"Ice cream?" Skywarp asked. He wasn't about to turn down free food, but surely there were more important things to take care of.

"We have to eat it before it melts and gets all over," Slingshot explained, opening the freezer and shining the light in. "You like chocolate, right?"

"Well, duh." Skywarp mentally shrugged and rolled with it. Slingshot handed him a carton of ice cream and a spoon.

Air Raid wandered out of the bedrooms, lantern in one hand and a deck of cards in the other. "Who are you talking to, 'Shot?" he asked. "Oh, hey, Skywarp. Do you know how to play poker?"

Skywarp had something of a reputation for bewildering any and everyone in the Universe he came across. The universe got in nine million years of karmatic revenge shortly after Skydive and Fireflight came home to find Slingshot, Air Raid and Skywarp huddled around a lantern and a deck of cards. "Why is there a Decepticon in our living room?" Skydive felt obliged to ask, though he knew he probably didn't want an answer.

"Helping us eat all the ice cream before it melts." Air Raid said without looking up. "What's higher, a straight or a flush?"

"A flush," Skydive replied, bemused. Fireflight handed him a spoon and sat between Air Raid and Slingshot to more efficiently steal bites from both their boxes of ice cream. "Wait," Skydive said, sitting down on Slingshot's other side. "Isn't that my ice cream?" He pointed his spoon at the chocolate in front of Skywarp. Skywarp shrugged and slid the carton halfway over.

Slingshot gathered up the cards and shuffled them clumsily. "Fives wild okay with you guys?" he asked. No-one had a problem with it, and he dealt out five hands. When they laid their hands down after trading out cards twice, Skydive had nothing. Air Raid and Slingshot smirked at him.

"Off with it," Air Raid said.

"Off with what?" Skywarp asked.

"Low hand loses an article of clothing," Slingshot explained. "It's in the rules." Air Raid and Fireflight nodded agreement.

Skydive groaned. "There's something wrong with you. All of you," he said, peeling off a sock and dropping it in the middle of the circle.

"We didn't make the rules," Fireflight said innocently.

"But you're playing the game," Skydive pointed out.

"So are you." Air Raid gathered up the cards and shuffled them expertly. "What's wild, 'Shot?"

"Threes."

And so the game went, the deal passed to the left and the winner picking wilds. Skywarp tried valiantly to keep up, but when Fireflight lost his shirt, Skywarp's human body demanded he notice his breasts, and how soft they looked, and wondering what they would feel like. Human males seemed to be obsessed by them, and Skywarp wondered, idly, if Fireflight would show him what was so great about them. Thundercracker would probably want to know, too. He would wait for him, and in the meantime, think of a way to get Fireflight to allow them to explore the mysteries of the female chest; that's why he was almost naked when the power came back on.

"Uh, Skywarp?" Fireflight said quietly. "You dripped." He pointed at the bit of ice cream running down Skywarp's bare chest, the beginnings of a blush staining his cheeks. Neither of them noticed Air Raid and Slingshot exchanging glances behind their brother's back.

"Oh?" Skywarp looked down. If Thundercracker was there, he would have asked him if he wanted to lick it off, just for the reactions everyone would have when he did. He almost asked Fireflight anyways, but he had had a real nice time so far. The Aerialbots weren't so bad once they stopped shooting at you, he thought. No point in angering them when this was the first time he'd had fun without having to take a shower afterwards since they had been stuck in these bodies. He wiped the ice cream off with his thumb and licked it.

"Can we put clothes back on now?" Skydive asked. "Or turn the heat up?"

"Yeah, the game's on," Slingshot agreed. He got up off the floor and sat on the couch, turning on the TV. The other Aerialbots and Skywarp pulled their clothes back on. Skydive sat at the desk and booted up their laptop, presumably to do homework. Air Raid joined Slingshot on the couch while Fireflight claimed the chair.

"Guess I'll just get going then," Skywarp half-muttered as he stood.

"What's the rush?" Air Raid asked. "Stay and watch the game."

Skywarp looked at the snowy picture. "What's wrong with your TV?"

"Nothing's wrong with it," Skydive said. "Just bad reception."

"Reception? No cable?" Skywarp didn't know they still made TVs that had such hookups, and a month working at the local Best Buy made him something of an expert. He shook his head. "You need to come over and watch it on mine." The Aerialbots exchanged glances. "My screen's bigger," he added.

"Go," Skydive said. "I'll tell Silverbolt."

The next week, Slingshot and Air Raid knocked on the door twenty minutes before kick-off with a bag of chips and a couple of jars of salsa. To Starscream's loud dismay, it didn't take even a week before there was a constant flow from one side of the hall to the other. Skywarp's TV drew Aerialbots to the Seeker's base, and lack of Starscream and the famous Aerialbot game collection drew the Seekers over more nights than not. Starscream stopped protesting as soon as he realized the Aerialbots kept Skywarp entertained, and Silverbolt was just happy that his team was happy.

* * *

Air Raid expected to be the first one home, but Fireflight was leaning against the picture window watching the rain when he came in. Air Raid kicked his wet shoes off –clothes weren't so bad, they rarely restricted his movements, but shoes were almost intolerable—and walked up behind Fireflight. "Whatcha doing home, 'Flight?" He wrapped his arms around his brother's waist and rested his chin on the other's shoulder.

Fireflight leaned back against him. "I got fired again."

"Oh, Fireflight." Air Raid pulled him towards the couch. "What happened?" Without the window to distract him, Fireflight studied the carpet to avoid Air Raid's eyes. Air Raid didn't need to see them to know the guilt and shame that would be there. "Did you go out in a blaze of politically-incorrect glory?"

Fireflight shook his head. "No, the PC police wasn't there today." He didn't say anything more, but his sudden flush gave him away.

"The boss's creepy son was hitting on you again?" Air Raid guessed. "They won't keep very many people if they don't get rid of him." His words sounded hollow, even to his ears, but he said it anyways. Without Superion, without their link, he couldn't see what had happened, nor could he reach out and comfort his brother.

Of course, if they had Superion, they'd be robots. They wouldn't need jobs even humans considered bottom of the barrel. And Fireflight would no longer be at the mercy of those strange chemicals called "hormones" that messed with his head and made him even more sensitive and easy to upset. And Slingshot wouldn't drink so much, and Skydive would talk more, and Silverbolt would worry not less, but about less important things, and Air Raid himself could get back to what was important and have fun. Life was too short for these messes, especially with the seventy years allocated to humans.

Human, Air Raid couldn't show Fireflight how much he didn't blame him, how his bosses were evil, how he understood that it really was never Fireflight's fault and he just had the worst luck in the world. Instead, he had to rely on human words that were never quite what he wanted to say. "You'll find another job," he said. "You always do."

"I always lose them, too," Fireflight sighed. "And it's harder to find one each time."

Air Raid patted his knee and got off the couch. Silverbolt had suggested to Fireflight once, kindly, that he could stay home and keep house, but the utter humiliation on Fireflight's face stopped him from even finishing the sentence and Skydive had jumped in to save them both, pointing out the financial difficulty. He had told them later, when Fireflight was in the shower, that he'd gladly give up school if it meant Fireflight didn't have to work, but he just couldn't stand insulting –hurting—his brother like that. No-one disagreed. Air Raid privately hoped that Fireflight knew as well, knew that his brothers loved him that much. Eight or even six months ago, he would know, but eight months without merging left its mark on them all. He brought a glass of chocolate milk back to Fireflight, who hadn't moved. "Hey," he said. "I'd rather you get fired a hundred times than keep one job like that."

Fireflight smiled weakly at him, and for the third time in as many minutes Air Raid cursed the loss of Superion. "I'll start looking tomorrow," he said.

"I'll take you to the malls, if you want," Air Raid promised.

"Okay." Fireflight looked down into his cup, looking for answers or away from Air Raid's face, Air Raid himself didn't know. "I'm sorry," he said, barely audible.

"It's okay," Air Raid said. "At least you lasted longer than Slingshot again." The joke fell flat. "It's okay," he said again.

All Aerialbots have the ability to come in at the perfect time to save one of his brothers, even Slingshot, and he did so before Fireflight could reply. "Fireflight? What are you doing home? Did you get fired again?" Fireflight nodded silently. "When are you going to learn?" Slingshot asked, opening the fridge and pulling out a beer can. "The only way to get ahead is to give head."

Fireflight didn't get it, but Air Raid did, so he patted Fireflight's knee again, got up, and punched Slingshot.


	2. 2

Title: I Think It's Going to Rain Today 2/?

Author: akisawana

Genre: Drama/Family, with guest appearances by Romance, Angst, Crack, and Oh God, Didn't I Swear I'd Never Do This?

Disclaimer: Insert standard disclaimer here. Transformers? Not mine. First fic to have Aerialbots in human bodies living across the hallway from Seekers? Nope.

Warnings: It has been suggested that I warn you not to read this during class. Skywarp's breast obsession. Slash. (Yes, he's got boobs. Still two guys, still slash.)

Notes: Beta'd by the ever-wonderful Mr. Bear, who is never afraid to drive the eighteen-wheeler of logic through the plot holes, and who wrote most of the Seeker's back-story. Too bad that doesn't show up for another ten chapters or so.

Summary: Pontiac's a rough town. You know how scared you are of Detroit? We're that scared of Pontiac. The Aerialbots seem to have missed the memo.

* * *

The fliers promised free music, and Thundercracker's co-workers kept talking about how fun it would be to go to something in Pontiac called "Arts, Beats, and Eats." Skywarp heard "food," and was game. And of course, the Aerialbots would try anything once. Starscream didn't want to come, muttering about tests to grade, but that was a bonus as far as everyone was concerned. Everyone else climbed into Air Raid's station wagon. (They called it Sherman, after the tank.) The festival was downtown and outside, with roads blocked off and booths set up right in the street. They were confused by the system of buying tickets with money for strange and inconsistent exchanges and then using the tickets to buy refreshments until Thundercracker figured out that it was just a way to charge three dollars for a bottle of soda.

They started out as one group, but the Seekers peeled off early to head towards the smaller stages. Human, Thundercracker could no longer download the fleshling music he had grown fond of and had to buy the CDs, which were much harder to hide. But he could also enjoy a live show, something he hadn't done in longer than he cared to remember. Skywarp tagged along with him, not actually that interested in the music, but it made Thundercracker happy when so few things did. The pair wandered between the smaller stages all afternoon, occasionally heading over to the food booths to try some new human cuisine. Skywarp discovered Polish food, and kept heading back to the greasy goodness, but Thundercracker stuck with his less disgusting sushi. At least he could see what was in his meal. They ran into Air Raid and Slingshot once, who had lost their brothers over by the art but figured they wouldn't leave without them. Skywarp tried to interest them in his pierogis, with no success, and the Aerialbot brothers wandered away shortly after in their quest to find the best beer there.

It grew dark, and the people running the place started packing up. Skywarp picked up one last serving of greasy glee, and they headed for the car, figuring the Aerialbots had to show up there eventually. The car was near halfway across the city; they took what they thought was a shortcut through an alley between a church and a bar. It was a blind alley, though, and at the far end were three people, a man standing with his pants unzipped, and another man twisting a blonde woman's arm around and forcing her to her knees. One of the men said something they couldn't hear, but they heard the woman's response clear enough. "I'd really rather not," she said, voice carrying to them clear as a bell. "It looks diseased." Skywarp choked on his food, and Thundercracker pounded him on the back.

"Madre de Dios," Skywarp said. "That's Fireflight!"

The men turned to look at them. "I think you better be moving along now," the one holding Fireflight said. "There's nothing here for you to see." The other man smirked. Fireflight just looked vaguely embarrassed, and offered them a sheepish half-smile.

"We should rescue him," Skywarp said, too low for anyone but Thundercracker to hear. "If we do, he has to let us play with his boobies."

"Is that all you think about?" Thundercracker asked. Skywarp's breast obsession had been entertaining at first, but the novelty had worn off for him early on, and now he half-suspected that Skywarp only kept talking about them to annoy him and Starscream.

"Boobies are awesome!" Skywarp declared, grinning. The strangers went back to…whatever it was they were doing.

"First off, he's a highly trained warrior and perfectly capable of taking care of himself," Thundercracker said. "And second, there's no way that tits are as great as you think they are."

"And how do you know?" Skywarp asked. "Have you been playing with them without me?" Thundercracker's reply was cut short by a crack, almost like a human gun, and a sharp cry of pain. Skywarp looked at Thundercracker and raised an eyebrow.

"Fine," Thundercracker grumbled. "He can't take care of himself. Go play hero."

Skywarp grinned and sauntered up to the men. "Share the fun?" he asked, and punched one of them in the nose. The other dropped Fireflight's arm and leapt at Skywarp, yelling incoherently. Fireflight didn't get up but leaned forwards instead, cradling his left arm in his right. Thundercracker looked at Skywarp. The humans weren't armed, and Skywarp certainly seemed to be enjoying himself. Thundercracker knelt in front of Fireflight. It wasn't difficult to find his most severe injury; his left forearm was rapidly swelling and the fingers of his right hand were wrapped around it so tightly they were turning white.

Fireflight looked up at him, bottom lip caught between his teeth and beginning to bleed. He looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole and die of humiliation. Thundercracker knew that look well; Skywarp had put it on damn near every Decepticon's face save Megatron at one point or another. He reached out and grasped him by the shoulders. "Let's get out of here," he said, pulling the other to his feet. Thundercracker kept an arm around Fireflight's shoulders and led him to a bus stop half a block down and across the street. He sank down in it, under the streetlight. "Let me see your arm," Thundercracker said, prying his fingers from it. He squeezed lightly from elbow to wrist. Fireflight gasped, but only once. Thundercracker could feel the broken edges of the bone, but didn't know what to do for it. If anything could be done for it. Human bodies couldn't get parts replaced, after all. He sat next to Fireflight, wondering what to do. Fireflight shivered against his arm; he was only wearing a thin tee shirt, and didn't have the thick insulating muscles that the Seekers had. Thundercracker took off his flannel over shirt and wrapped it around Fireflight.

"Thank you," Fireflight said, a little shyly. Thundercracker smiled at him and put his arms around Fireflight to help keep him warm. He'd never broken a strut, no, bone as a human, but he had as a robot, and based on the minor bruises he'd had in the past eight months, Thundercracker couldn't imagine how much a broken bone would hurt. And Fireflight was enduring it silently, not crying, but not demanding everyone notice how brave he was being or simply falling unconscious. Thundercracker was fairly sure he himself would be begging for his creator.

Skywarp came out of the alley then, grinning like a lunatic around a scraped knuckle. "How you doing, kid?" he asked Fireflight, noting their positions with amusement.

"There's something wrong with his arm," Thundercracker answered for him. "The bone's snapped in half."

"And you didn't take him to the chop shop because, TC?"

"Humans don't have repair bays. Or at least not ones I've seen."

"We could fill books with what you haven't seen." Skywarp rolled his eyes. "They're called hospitals, o observant one, and there's a big one a few blocks south. Really, what would you do without me?"

"Have a quiet, peaceful life," Thundercracker grumbled, getting up and offering his hand to Fireflight.

"A boring one," Skywarp laughed. "Kiddo, your brothers got a number?"

Fireflight shook his head, eyes sliding away from them. "We can't afford cell phones." How long had it taken him to pick up on poverty being shameful, Thundercracker wondered.

Skywarp, who had been on both ends, just grinned. "I'll just go find them then. Meet you at the emergency room." He caught Fireflight's eye and grinned again. "TV promises you hot nurses. Find me one?" he teased.

"I'll try," Fireflight said quietly. Skywarp took off north, where most of the people were, and Thundercracker turned Fireflight south, arm around his waist in case he needed support. True to Skywarp's word, the biggest human building Thundercracker had seen yet said Pontiac Osteopathic Hospital in letters easily read from where he was. Fireflight made it about halfway before he had to lean against Thundercracker, but he faded fast after that. The Seeker practically had to carry him the last hundred feet to the doors under the big red-and-white "Emergency" sign.

Inside, the security guard directed them to a row of hard plastic chairs. A male nurse came out from behind a curtain and took Fireflight's elbow. Fireflight hissed in pain, but the nurse either didn't notice or didn't care. He led Fireflight back behind the curtain, and Thundercracker followed. The nurse stopped and glared at him. "You can't come back here," he said. "Wait there."

"Why not?" Thundercracker asked calmly.

"Hospital rules." Thundercracker took a step towards them, unwilling to let this stranger take Fireflight out of his sight. "Sir, sit down," he ordered. "You can see her after I'm done with the paperwork." Thundercracker weighed his options, and decided that while his wingmates might not mind him causing a scene, Fireflight probably would. He sat in the chair and waited. Fireflight was in there for no more than fifteen minutes, but he looked rather upset when he came out. Thundercracker stood as soon as he saw him and caught him as he stumbled. The nurse looked disapprovingly at them but led them to a room with another curtain in place of one of the walls, two more uncomfortable chairs, and a bed that was higher than normal. "A nurse will be by shortly," he said, and left them alone. Fireflight looked at the bed. It was clear he was supposed to sit on it, but it was just as clear that he couldn't climb up by himself.

"Turn around," Thundercracker told him. He did, and Thundercracker hoisted him up easily to sit on the bed. The seeker pulled one of the chairs over and sat in it while Fireflight arranged himself cross-legged, broken arm cradled in his lap. "What did he want in there?"

"Just my name and stuff." Fireflight tugged Thundercracker's shirt a little closer around him; the hospital was cold.

"You were in there for awhile."

Fireflight shrugged. "He thought you broke my arm. He was very insistent on that point."

"I wonder why," Thundercracker said, looking around the room for anything interesting. The room was very beige. "What did those men want, anyways?"

"He wanted me to put his…thing in his mouth. Why would he want that?"

"Because it feels good." Thundercracker smirked. It wasn't easy to get Skywarp to do it for him, but by Primus it was worth it.

"Like sex?" Fireflight whispered.

Thundercracker laughed."Yes, like sex."

Fireflight abruptly looked away. The kid was as nervous as a petro-rabbit around him, even after five weeks of not trying to kill him. Not that Thundercracker blamed him, exactly; Thundercracker had shot him not a few times over the past twenty-odd years. Still, he wasn't a bad kid, and they were stuck together for the foreseeable future. He scooted a little closer, close enough to rest his elbows on the bed. "You've tried it?" he asked, mostly to make conversation. The Aerialbot didn't say anything, but his silence spoke volumes. "You should," Thundercracker said. "It's just about the only thing these fleshbags are good for."

"Chocolate," Fireflight told his lap.

"Chocolate is good," Thundercracker agreed. "Sex is better."

Fireflight couldn't really agree or disagree, so he didn't say anything. Another nurse, this one female, came in then, saving the silence from dragging on too long. "We're going to take you to get X-rays now, hun. Follow me?" Fireflight slid off the bed, and they followed the nurse through the crowded hallways to a room with "Danger! Radiation" on the door. "You'll have to wait out here, hun," the nurse told Thundercracker. There was one of the ubiquitous plastic chairs outside it. Thundercracker wandered off to find a vending machine instead.

When Fireflight's X-rays were done, the nurse sent them back to their cubicle, promising to meet them with Tylenol for Fireflight. They found a woman waiting for them in one of the chairs, dressed more business-like than the nurses in their scrubs. "You're not a nurse," Thundercracker said.

"No, I'm Sharon" the woman said, smiling. "Can I talk to you alone," she looked down at a clipboard to check Fireflight's human name, "Raven?"

"Why can't he stay?" Fireflight asked innocently."Let's have a little bit of girl talk," Sharon said, still smiling, though it didn't reach her eyes.

"I can wait right outside," Thundercracker said. He didn't want to leave Fireflight alone when he was injured, but he figured the Aerialbot would shout if he needed him. He took up position right outside the curtain and leaned against the edge of the wall separating their cubicle from the one next to it. His weak human ears could hear their voices, but not what they were saying. Five minutes later, he heard Fireflight cry out in alarm and pain. "Hey!" He came around the curtain to see the woman squeezing his broken arm and shaking it. "Stop it," he ordered, pulling Fireflight away from her and behind him.

He'd noticed over the past weeks that the Aerialbots were always touching each other, and he kept one hand wrapped around Fireflight's to reassure him as he stood between him and the crazy woman. "Let go of her, sir," the not-nurse said.

"You're hurting her," Thundercracker read her name off her ID badge, "Mrs. Praknaski." He tried to remain calm, but it was hard. They were supposed to be helping Fireflight, not hurting him more. He couldn't stop his voice from dropping half an octave. "Stop it," he said again.

"Let go of her, sir, or I will call security. You're not welcome here," the Praknaski woman said.

"I think that's her decision."

"I don't think Rachel is capable of making the right decisions," she said. "Not with her abuser in the room."

"Abuser?" Thundercracker and Fireflight said at the same time. "He didn't hurt me," Fireflight said. "He wouldn't hurt me." It surprised Thundercracker to realize that that was true, at least for now.

"We're concerned," Praknaski said slowly, as if to a stupid youngling, "because of your anxiety, and the clear finger marks on your arm."

Fireflight came out from behind Thundercracker, but he didn't let go of his hand. "I've never been in an emergency room before," he admitted.

"And the marks?" In answer, Thundercracker raised Fireflight's arm, carefully stabilizing his elbow, and wrapped his fingers lightly around his wrist. Thundercracker's fingers were far too long and a bit too wide to line up with the bruises. He looked pointedly at the woman, and imagined wrapping his fingers around her fat neck and squeezing.

Slowly.

Whatever the woman was going to say was cut off by the timely arrival of the nurse, alerted by the noise. "Thank you, Sharon," the nurse said to the evil woman, who looked rather like Megatron whenever Starscream crowed about being right. "But I think we'll be alright now."

The Praknaski woman left with bad grace, muttering something under her breath that was probably offensive. Thundercracker led Fireflight back to the bed and hoisted him up again before sitting back down in the chair to stay out of the nurse's way. The nurse put some sort of clamp hooked up to a beeping machine on Fireflight's finger and gave him the promised painkillers. "The doctor will look at your X-ray's as soon as he can, hun," she said. "Can I get you anything?"

"Do you have any blankets?" Fireflight asked.

"Of course, hun," the nurse said. "I'll bring you one right away." Fireflight took the pillow from the head of the bed and laid it across the foot. When the nurse brought the blanket back, he lay down on his side, his head now near Thundercracker, and pulled the blanket awkwardly around himself. Thundercracker reached over and straightened it.

"What was that woman's malfunction?" he asked.

"I don't know," Fireflight said. "She seemed to think that there was something wrong with you. She kept saying that you shouldn't treat me like 'that.' But she never explained what she meant. She was very insistent that I let her find somewhere safe for me to stay. I told her there wasn't anywhere safer than with you." He stopped speaking abruptly, as if he hadn't wanted to say the last out loud.

Thundercracker noticed that, the same way he had noticed Fireflight looking at him the past month when he thought he wasn't looking and the way the other Aerialbots conspired to throw them together as much as possible, whether it be on the same team during a game or next to each other when watching TV. And he had also noticed that this was the most words in a row he'd ever heard out of Fireflight. "Of course there isn't," Thundercracker said, putting a hand on the other's shoulder. "Nothing bad is going to happen as long as I'm around." He'd also noticed over the past month that Fireflight was significantly less obnoxious than Starscream. And could put up with Skywarp seemingly forever. And saw things that no-one else saw, amazing things.

Fireflight smiled at him. "That's not a very good Decepticon thing to say."

"I'm not a very good Decepticon." Thundercracker smiled back at him. "Is the Tylenol helping at all?"

"Not really," Firefight pulled a bag of M&Ms out of his pocked and tore it open. "Want some?" Fireflight nodded and held out his hand. Thundercracker poured a few out for him, and a few more for himself. "So how's the job hunt going?" he asked just to make conversation.

"Not well," Fireflight groaned.

"Did you try any place that wasn't a store?" Skywarp only worked at Best Buy so they could abuse his discount, Thundercracker at Staples because they were the first place to hire him, and by the time Starscream and Skywarp were settled enough for him to look for another job, they had made him a manager. But the Aerialbots worked entry-level retail jobs, except for Slingshot who did fast food.

"I'm not qualified to do anything else." One of the first things Starscream had done was set up elaborate paper trails for himself and his wingmates, giving himself two degrees that were legitimate as far as the University of Florida was concerned, Thundercracker a degree in music theory from the Pratt Institute and Skywarp a tour of duty in the Air Force. Optimus Prime, Fireflight explained, had arranged for the Autobots to take the human's tests. The Autobots had thought general equivalency degrees would be just as good as high school diplomas. They hadn't reckoned on sections about Earth history, or on some Autobots not being able to pass it, or on there being a waiting period for retakes. "Most places don't hire people without it," he said softly, "and only Skydive and Silverbolt really passed. Air Raid did too, but it was just luck." He pulled away from Thundercracker as he spoke.

Thundercracker tugged him back and gently rested a hand on Fireflight's forehead to keep him from moving away again. Seekers had a sensor vent there, and stroking it was often the easiest way to make them hold still. Aerialbots, or at least Aerialbots in human flesh, seemed to work the same way. He watched Fireflight's eyes go wide, and then drift half-closed. Primus. The kid had a crush on him. "Your brother's very lucky," he said, changing the subject. "Lucky that Skywarp didn't feed him his own elbows last week." He smiled at the memory. "It's not often someone manages to trip him up like that."

"Air Raid's always liked football," Fireflight said after a moment.

"That does not surprise me in the least," Thundercracker said. "So does Ramjet."

"What does that mean?" Fireflight demanded, indignant on his brother's behalf.

Chuckling, Thundercracker patted Fireflight's shoulder with his other hand, leaning in close. "Nothing. Your brother is nothing like Ramjet." He cocked his head, as if considering something. "Do you think we could trade the Coneheads for you?"

Fireflight pretended to consider this as well. "I don't think so. Ratchet hates fixing jets."

"They are clumsy," Thundercracker agreed. "Perhaps we should just give them to you. For target practice. You need it."

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, you can't shoot me, can you?" He smirked at Fireflight. "Or am I just that awesome in the air?" Fireflight smiled back at him, but his face grew sad. He didn't have to say anything for Thundercracker to know he was missing flight. Thundercracker sighed. "Tylenol still not helping at all?" Fireflight shook his head. "Didn't think so…your brothers ought to be here for you soon."

"I'm fine with you," Fireflight said. Thundercracker gave him the lie. Fliers did not like being apart from their wingmates. (Where was Skywarp anyways?) Combiners did not like being apart from their brothers; the dents in the wall were still there from Hook's last hissy fit, as far as he knew. There was no way in the Pit Fireflight was fine, injured and alone. But his quiet calm was impressive. Thundercracker was used to distracting his wingmates when they were injured, not this strange surreal almost normality, and it was a little unsettling. He didn't quite know what to do, and settled for stroking Fireflight's hair.

The nurse came in, followed by a man with in a white coat who introduced himself as Dr. Bennett. Fireflight sat up, and Thundercracker tried to fade to the background. The doctor didn't even look at Fireflight, instead showing the X-rays to Thundercracker and spouting medical jargon that neither of them understood. Thundercracker nodded at what seemed like the right places, wondering what the doctor's problem was and why he was ignoring Fireflight. From the pictures, it looked like there were two parallel bones that had been snapped cleanly in half. "A good, clean break," the doctor said, the first thing that was actually understandable. "We'll put a cast on it and it will heal up just fine."

Another nurse, this one male, wheeled in a cart with what looked remarkably like a human-sized interrogation device. The doctor took Fireflight's arm, not the least bit gently, and clamped the ring at the top around his wrist so his arm hung straight down. "This might hurt a bit," one of the nurses said. "Do you want to hold her hand?" Thundercracker looked at Fireflight, who just shrugged. He stepped around to the right side of the bed and picked up Fireflight's hand. The doctor grasped the broken bones through the skin and forced them in line. Fireflight paled and squeezed Thundercracker's hand so hard the Seeker had to suck his breath in hard to keep from crying out. The male nurse clamped Fireflight's elbow in place, and they started wrapping his arm in wet bandages. After a few layers, they released the arm from the clamps, held his elbow at a sharp right angle, and wrapped more bandages from halfway to his shoulder all the way past his wrist. When the cast was an inch or so thick, they stopped, and the doctor smoothed the end of the bandage. Their nurse took a small pillow from the bottom of the cart and set it on the rolling table, then pulled it next to the bed so the male nurse could drop Fireflight's arm on it. She was too professional to glare at him as she adjusted the height of the table to be more comfortable.

"Give it a half-hour to set, and you'll be on your way," the doctor said. "We'll get your paperwork ready in the meantime." He left, and the male nurse followed, taking the cart with him. The other nurse stayed long enough to ask Fireflight if he needed anything, and followed them when he said he didn't.

"Going to give me my hand back?" Thundercracker asked, and then smirked when he jumped and let go hastily. Instead of returning to his chair, he hopped up on the bed behind Fireflight. Fireflight tensed visibly, which only made Thundercracker smirk more. He wrapped an arm around Fireflight's hip and used that hand to balance himself as he leaned over to examine the new cast. Fireflight nearly stopped breathing. Thundercracker decided he liked this new sport; it was almost as much fun as terrifying ground-pounders. He sat back, but didn't move his hand. "Why so nervous?" he asked in the false innocent voice he had picked up from Skywarp.

"I don't like this place," Fireflight said.

"We'll leave in half an hour and go find your brothers."

"And Skywarp."

That pleased Thundercracker, for some reason he couldn't quite identify. "And Skywarp."

"Speak of the devil, and he appears!" Skywarp announced, coming around the corner with the other Aerialbots in tow. Thundercracker patted Fireflight's leg one last time, just for fun, and slid off the bed, which was rapidly surrounded by Fireflight's brothers. The Seekers watched as Silverbolt examined the cast and Skydive sat on the bed behind his brother, much as Thundercracker had. Air Raid threw himself across the foot of the bed and declared himself drunk. Fireflight agreed with him, giggling a little, and let him take his free hand. Slingshot took Thundercracker's chair, and laid his head down on the pillow, slurring something about size not mattering, clearly even more intoxicated than Air Raid.

"It's like a Stunticon fleet multiplied by a flock of Seekers," Thundercracker murmured to Skywarp.

"What did you expect? They're draped all over each other most of the time anyways. Did you ask him?"

"Ask him about what?"

"Boobies," Skywarp prompted.

"Somehow the subject never came up," he replied wryly. "Besides, we don't want to play with them."

"Why not?"

"They're not very big," Thundercracker half-lied. In truth, while he had no problems leading Fireflight on to watch him squirm, abusing the kid's crush like that just didn't sit right with him.

Skywarp gave him a knowing look. He knew Thundercracker was lying, and that whatever it was Thundercracker would tell him sooner or later. His wingmate couldn't keep a secret from him to save his life.

An hour later, the Seekers had colonized the Aerialbots' kitchen and were watching Skydive fuss over Fireflight while Silverbolt attempted to peel his other brothers off of the injured one and put them to bed."They're like a bunch of sparklings," Skywarp marveled once Silverbolt had the inebriated ones in their bedroom at least, helping himself to coffee. "How did they ever beat us?"

"They are sparklings," Thundercracker pointed out. "And I blame you."

"Me? What did I do?"

"You were sparked," Thundercracker said. Silverbolt came out of the back bedroom. He looked tired and worried, not that either Seeker took much notice. Silverbolt almost always looked tired and worried.

"I hate to ask, but can one of you do me a favor?"

"What?" Thundercracker asked.

"Do either of you have tomorrow afternoon off? None of us do; I don't want to leave him alone one-handed."

"I'll stay with him," Thundercracker said, kicking Skywarp's ankle.

"Thank you," Silverbolt said, and went to join Skydive in the fussing.

Skywarp slid Thundercracker a look that could only be defined as trickster. "Someone's got an early morning," Thundercracker announced, not that anyone was really listening, and hauled his wingmate out before Skywarp could say anything terrible.

Across the hall, Skywarp looked at him. He didn't say anything, just _looked._

"What?"

"I didn't say anything," Skywarp said with wide-eyed innocence. "I was just thinking it's a shame I work late tomorrow and you'll be stuck alone with him all afternoon."

Thundercracker didn't dignify that with a response.

* * *

Wow. That was not supposed to be half that long…Anyways. You only wish I made this stuff up. To be continued and all that jazz. I promise things will be explained at some point; shooting for the end of the next chapter but seeing as it was supposed to be the end of this chapter, don't hold your breath. Please read and review. Silence only encourages me, praise more, but what really gets me going is concrit. Where can I improve?


	3. 3

Title: I Think It's Going to Rain Today 3/?  
Author: akisawana  
Genre: Drama/Family, with guest appearances by Romance, Angst, Crack, and Oh God, Didn't I Swear I'd Never Do This?  
Disclaimer: Insert standard disclaimer here. Transformers? Not mine.  
Warnings: Skywarp.  
Notes: This chapter was, seriously, such a millstone that I ended up rewriting it some time after originally posting it.  
Summary: Surprise Pairing is Not Surprising. Thundercracker is indecisive. Aerialbots are strange. Author is shot for writing terrible summary.

* * *

The door had barely closed behind the Seekers before Silverbolt sat on the couch and pulled Fireflight into his lap. He didn't say anything, didn't swear any of the silly oaths running through his mind about never letting his little brother out of his sight again, just held him tight and thanked whatever deity had been looking out for them that night that Fireflight was safe now. Fireflight didn't protest, but then again, he never did. Once he had satisfied his screaming instincts, he loosened his grip on Fireflight enough for him to sit back, look him in the eye –and breathe. "I'm okay," Fireflight said, even as Skydive settled next to them. "Really. I'm okay."

"I know," Silverbolt said, but he didn't let go. Knowing and believing were two different things. "What happened to your pepper spray?"

"He said he had a gun," Fireflight shrugged. "It must have been empty, or he was lying, but I couldn't tell at the time."

"Sound strategy," Skydive said. "We should put you on a leash."

Silverbolt should have told Skydive no, like he always had in the past, but right now that was sounding like a good idea. He knew that he was being irrational because this was the first time any of the Aerialbots had been seriously hurt in months, but he told himself firmly that humans were fragile little things and he was allowed to succumb to his pheromones...hormones... whatever they were called and panic for a little bit. "So, Skywarp and Thundercracker?" he asked instead.

"Skywarp wants to, ah," Fireflight made a vague gesture towards his chest. "Investigate my bra. He certainly stares at it enough. I think Thundercracker wants to help, but I'm less sure."

"Please do not interface with Thundercracker so he doesn't shoot you," Silverbolt said. "I can't believe I have had to say that _multiple times _in my life."

"At least it's not to the same one of us," Skydive said.

"You were the _first_," Silverbolt reminded him.

"It's been weeks, Silverbolt," Fireflight said. "They're not going to shoot us. Can I interface with them anyways?"

Silverbolt facepalmed. "Would you really listen if I said no?" he asked. Fireflight _would_, though, which was the main reason he _wouldn't_ say no.

"I was just teasing," Fireflight sulked. "I'm not sure they connect breasts and interfacing."

"They're male humans, yes?" Skydive said. "It's one of the strongest reactions the male body has. They connect the two. But Seekers can take interfacing very seriously, Teletraan I didn't have much details, but some of the tactical aerial texts mentioned that it could interfere with them on the battlefield more than most mechs."

"How badly?" Silverbolt asked.

Skydive suddenly became very interested in his shoes. "Well, you know how Starscream and Megatron don't really get along? There's more than one article speculating they were once together."

"Primus," Silverbolt said.

"I'll be careful," Fireflight promised. "I just want to be friends with them. Wouldn't it be nice if they were our friends?"

"I don't want three angry Seekers on our doorstep," Silverbolt said, because sometimes Fireflight didn't think things through all the way.

"How bad could three angry humans be?" Skydive asked.

Fireflight shivered. "Really bad. Skywarp was really scary. I don't want to think about it. He was scarier than those men."

"I'm liking this idea less and less," Silverbolt said. "Even in the best-case scenario they're dangerous, and unlike our other dangerous friends they're not fellow Autobots. And at the worst, this is Starscream plotting to get back in Megatron's good graces."

"I think they're desperate and lonely," Fireflight said. "I don't know why, but I do. I want to try, at least. Unless you won't let me?"

Silverbolt wouldn't say no to Fireflight making friends, and his little brother damn well knew it. And if he didn't know why he thought they were desperate and lonely, it would be far from the first time Fireflight had picked up on something subtle without being able to verbalize exactly what. "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings," Silverbolt quoted, "Including the freedom to do stupid things." It was something Prime had said, once, to Ratchet when the medic had looked about to throw an exception over some poor choices Wheeljack had made.

"That's not entirely fair," Skydive said. "I'm sure trying to befriend two high-strung Decepticons who have tried to kill us since the day we onlined is much safer than trying to defuse a bomb with a pair of tweezers made out of car antennas and duct tape."

* * *

Thundercracker passed Slingshot in the elevator on his way up after work. Slingshot looked hung over, despite it being nearly two o'clock in the afternoon. He nodded weakly at the Seeker, not managing a smart remark or even to pull a face. Upstairs, the door to the Aerialbot's apartment was unlocked and Fireflight was flipping through a magazine one-handed on the couch. He looked up at Thundercracker's entrance. "Hey," he said, waving a little.

Thundercracker waved back. "How's your arm?" he asked, sitting next to him.

Fireflight shrugged. "Still sore."

"Do you know what else they need to do to it yet?"

"Nothing." Fireflight smiled. He smiled more than anyone Thundercracker had ever met, but since they were always sincere, he never gave it a second thought. Still, it was a nice smile. Very nice. "I just have to wear this thing for six weeks and it will fix itself like magic. Aren't organic bodies amazing sometimes?"

"You could call it that," Thundercracker said. Among all the words he had used to describe his current fleshy prison, "amazing" was pretty far down the list, but he couldn't quite bring himself to ruin Fireflight's excitement.

"They build some of the most complicated things out of simple pieces, without thinking about it or anything, all by themselves," Fireflight enthused. Thundercracker couldn't help but smile. It had been so long since he'd been around someone who was so innocently happy. Then again, if Skywarp had ever been innocent, it was long before they had met, and he hadn't seen Starscream happy since that disastrous trip with Skyfire.

"I brought a movie," Thundercracker said. "It's supposed to be the best movie ever made." He stood up and put Casablanca in the DVD player. When he sat back down, it was considerably closer to Fireflight. He stretched his arms across the back of the couch, his right arm barely two inches from Fireflight's back. Fireflight held perfectly still, his attention riveted on the Seeker at his side. "I haven't seen it," Thundercracker continued. "Skywarp bought it on sale last week. It's supposed to have Nazis."

"What are Nazis?" Fireflight asked, surprised that he sounded normal.

Thundercracker shrugged. "They're a bit like evil Decepticons." Fireflight had always heard that Decepticons _were_ evil, but then again, he was letting one sit next to him, and last night, two had saved him for no apparent Decepticon reason. Even if Thundercracker was a terrible Decepticon, he still was one, and he had stayed with Fireflight all night, held his hand and told him it would be okay, scared away nasty humans and fed him chocolate. His brothers accused him, rightly, of having a crush on the blue Seeker, but he had held no illusions about Thundercracker and both of them had surprised him last night. "Imagine if Megatron killed all the minibots, just for being minibots. No matter how loyal or useful they were. Just rounded them up and sent them to the smelters, along with anyone who tried to save them or spoke out against him or he just plain didn't like. No mercy, no second chances." Fireflight shivered at the thought. As terrible as Megatron was, the stuff of his nightmares, he knew the Decepticon leader to possess a twisted sense of mercy, or at least a perverse practicality that these Nazis lacked. Thundercracker noticed the shiver. "They ruled Germany for less than a generation, and that was sixty years ago. There was a war, and they were all killed."

"Oh," Fireflight said, finding the remote and telling the movie to play. Thundercracker didn't say anything more; Fireflight assumed he was more like Skydive and less like Slingshot when it came to talking during movies until he felt the heavy arm across his shoulders. He looked to Thundercracker, meaning to ask him what he was doing, but his question died on his lips. Thundercracker was asleep. Fireflight remembered that he had to get up at four in the morning on workdays, which really cut into Skydive's Euchre rotations. They hadn't been home until after midnight last night. It was even possible he hadn't slept at all. Instead of waking him up, Fireflight leaned against him and closed his eyes. He'd wanted this for so long; he'd be a fool to not take advantage of the opportunity when it presented itself. In his sleep, Thundercracker gathered him close and his head dropped onto Fireflight's. The arm around Fireflight was strong, the heartbeat under his head was steady, and the Seeker was warm, all far more interesting than the movie. He set about memorizing the feeling; a little safe, like being at the bottom of a pile of his brothers and a little exciting, like being touched by a lover for the first time. Once he was sure he had the feel and the smell and the sound memorized, he relaxed against Thundercracker with a little sigh and just enjoyed being held.

When Air Raid came in, shoes already off, he blinked at the two on the couch. "Fireflight…" he began.

"Don't wake him up," Fireflight said quietly. "Please." When Air Raid looked as if he was going to say something, he continued, "I'm never going to get to do this again. Don't ruin it."

"But 'Flight, he's already awake," Air Raid pointed out.

Fireflight covered his face with his hands, and prayed for Air Raid to be lying or the earth to swallow him up. Next to him, Thundercracker laughed. "Did you really think I wouldn't notice?"

"How long?" he asked.

"Long enough," Thundercracker chuckled. When Fireflight tried to move away, Thundercracker didn't let him by simply not moving. He told himself it was just to be a jerk. "You're not hurting anything," he added. "Whose turn is it to make dinner?"

"Mine," Air Raid said, studying the freezer. "Just four tonight, right? Skydive has class, Slingshot's doing the ad set."

"Starscream has his late night tonight, and Skywarp closes," Fireflight added. "Slingshot traded with someone this morning. Silverbolt and he will be back in about half an hour."

Air Raid nodded. "Chicken, then. Quick and easy." He pulled ingredients out of the fridge and started cooking. "C'mon, you guys, talk or something," he said after perhaps five minutes. "Or I'm going to put on the radio and sing along."

"Only if I get to pick the station," Thundercracker threw in. "Why do you have my wingmates' schedules memorized?"

Fireflight shrugged under his arm. "I just noticed it."

"For someone who crashed into things as often as you did, you notice a lot." Fireflight flushed. "Hey, I'm just teasing you," Thundercracker said gently. "'Warp's gotten himself almost slagged more than a few times because he was busy trying to think of new names to call Starscream. When we first came to this planet, he crashed into a mountain that way and brought an avalanche down on his head. It took us three hours to dig him out, him cursing at us over the radio and Starscream cursing right back. Once we got him out, he tried to stand on it, and sank right back down up to his wingtips." If he made the kid squirm too much, he wouldn't play anymore. Had nothing to do with making Fireflight smile, not at all. Seeing that beautiful smile was just a fringe benefit. Besides, the Many Stupid Crashes of Skywarp filled much more than thirty minutes, and saved them from Air Raid's singing.

Air Raid's cooking, while edible, was definitely lacking in several areas. It wasn't often that one needed a steak knife to cut chicken. But it was better than Starscream's, and it was free. He didn't speak much through the meal; the evening meal doubled as time for the Aerialbots' ritual recounting of their individual day. Thundercracker didn't participate, though they invited him to occasionally. When he was young, his own family had done the same thing.

Instead, Thundercracker watched the Aerialbots, mostly out of habit. He knew that there were things they didn't discuss in front of the Seekers, much as the Seekers kept their own secrets. While for the most part he didn't care to pry, he hated conflict by nature and liked ample warning so he could make sure if he was drawn in, he and his would come through as safely as possible. Usually by means of a preliminary strike or simply beating the opposition into scrap, though Starscream found his methods both unsubtle and conservative, more than half the time Thundercracker was saving the ungrateful fragger from himself.

Something was off with the Aerialbots, he could see. Three of them were practically ignoring Fireflight. And since he knew damage to one lead all the rest to suffocating displays of concern, leaving the injured one to fend for himself one-handed against Air Raid's cooking just didn't fit. As Air Raid began to tell some story about some stupid fleshling that attempted to rush out with stolen merchandise only to smack into the doors since someone turned off the automatic sensor, Thundercracker saw Silverbolt flash Fireflight a quick smile. A quick encouraging smile.

They were doing it on purpose.

For what purpose, Thundercracker couldn't fathom, and didn't try. He reached over and plucked the plate neatly from Fireflight's lap, cut the meat, and returned it. Whatever they meant, all they were doing was making the poor kid go hungry. Fireflight gave him a grateful smile, and no one commented on it. Soon after dinner, he disappeared back to his side of the hallway. It didn't fit for them to throw Fireflight off the proverbial building to fly or fall and that meant something was up.

* * *

"You're thinking of him again, aren't you?" Skywarp asked, two days later.

"Yeah," Thundercracker admitted a little guiltily. He shouldn't have been, not with Skywarp tucked around him like they never got to be these days, not with Aerialbots coming and going at all hours. He should have been thinking how to remove Skywarp's clothing or how this worked better without wings and intakes in the way, paltry benefit that was.

"I don't mind," Skywarp said. "It's distracting you, and Vector Sigma knows you need it." Thundercracker made a vague noise of surprise and lifted his head from Skywarp's shoulder. Skywarp smiled at him. "You need to worry about someone, TC, 'cause otherwise you don't bother to take care of yourself. You get all mopey instead, and then I gotta take care of you, which generally isn't a problem except when I'm trying to keep Screamer from killing himself through sheer willful dumbness. Did you know he didn't know you can't answer your phone while you pump gas?"

"Why not?"

"It'll explode. Can I play with his boobies?"

"No."

"Why not? He'd let me if you asked him."

"That's why." Thundercracker got up, suddenly, irrationally, irritated by all Aerialbots and went to the window. Skywarp followed him, wordlessly offering a cigarette. Thundercracker took it, lit it off the end of Skywarp's, and let Skywarp drape an arm around him. "It wouldn't be right. He'd say yes, and then the next day when we sent him home, he'd be crushed." Skywarp smirked at him, and Thundercracker hastily added, "And then his brothers would kill us."

"And if we kept him?"

"Kept him?" Thundercracker repeated slowly.

"Why not? He's got boobs. And he's real fun to hang around. Most importantly," Skywarp continued, gently tugging at Thundercracker to make him look him in the eyes, "he makes you happy. Even when you're just watching TV or whatever. I've seen you smile more this last month than since we crashed on this dirtball." Skywarp leaned against him hard, pinning him against the wall. "I want him. I want you to be happy."

"Skywarp…" Thundercracker murmured, one hand coming up, to do what neither knew. "You don't have to."

Skywarp caught his hand. "I know. Still want to." He pulled Thundercracker's hand around his back; without sensitive wing joints there, the gesture was purely symbolic. "I don't mind sharing. I more than don't mind. I like him too. And even if I didn't, it would be worth it."

Thundercracker dropped his cigarette in the ashtray and wrapped his arms around Skywarp's waist. "It's okay. I'll live without him."

"By the throne of Liege Maximo," Skywarp swore. "You want him to be part of us. I want him to be part of us. He wants to be part of us. If all three of us were an us, everyone would be happy!" He paused to consider, and then revised. "Everyone involved in the us would be happy. I dunno what the brothers would have to say about it. Anyways, the point remains is once again I'm trying to talk you into doing something that is going to be six kinds of awesome that you don't want to do because you are broken in the brainpan."

"Broken in the brainpan?"

Skywarp shrugged. "They can't all be winners. Stop fighting it. Or is it because he's miserable?"

"He's got nothing to do with it. He can explode himself at a gas pump for all I care," Thundercracker managed to lie with a straight face, but his wingmate wasn't fooled.

"TC." Skywarp cursed Thundercracker's morals, and his creator for instilling them in him, and Starscream for not having any, and Megatron out of habit. "Stop. Just stop. Do you want to pine over him? Am I wrong and that's what would really make you happy?"

Thundercracker had to admit it would not.

"Then why, by shiny Cybertron, are you being such a pain in the skidplate about this?"

"I don't know."

Skywarp flopped across the couch, mostly to keep from strangling Thundercracker. Yes, he was used to dragging Thundercracker kicking and screaming into anything that challenged the status quo, but this was getting ridiculous, and he could only coddle his wingmate for so much longer before he lost it and smacked him upside the head. Hard. He gave it one last shot. "You doubt everything and have to think everything through, and usually that's a good thing, but not now. You wanna do this or not?"

Thundercracker sat next to him and took his cigarette before it burned another hole in the couch. "Yes, but-"

"Then no more worrying," Skywarp interrupted. "We'll take it slow, get him used to us –he's not going anywhere, and neither are we. And it will work out just fine. I promise."

Thundercracker smiled at him. Skywarp made all sorts of promises, but he only kept the ones he made to two people and Thundercracker was one of them. "Have I ever told you that you are the universe's greatest wingmate?" he asked.

"Mmm, I believe so. But tell me again." Skywarp stretched out along the couch and pulled Thundercracker down on top of him.

"You are the universe's best wingmate," he said, kissing him. Thundercracker explained, in great detail, how much he appreciated all Skywarp did for him, and how lucky he knew he was to have him. All without saying a word.

Even though they were dressed when Starscream came home, he knew what they had done by the silly smiles, the shared cigarette and the squishy snuggling. "You two," he said, shaking his head. "Why are you such slagging sparklings?"

"Shut it, Screamer," Skywarp said lazily, not about to let his good mood be ruined. "You're just jealous."

"Anything that sticky is more trouble than it's worth," Starscream snapped. "Megatron's moved."

"Where to?" Thundercracker asked.

"Thailand, apparently. The gestalts are already there."

"He was in Africa before, wasn't he?"

"Yes."

"Is he stopping over in the USA?"

"No."

"Then what do we care?" Skywarp put in. "Let him go to Thailand, pick up a hooker and die of syphilis or whatever." He sounded bitter, more so than Starscream expected. Then again, the situation was absolutely unprecedented.

"At least we know not to go to Bangkok anytime soon," Thundercracker said, reflexively smoothing Skywarp's hair.

"And were we planning on going in the first place? Is there anything there but hookers?"

"Skywarp," Starscream said; all he said, but it was enough to remind him that Starscream was still in charge, no matter what else had changed. Skywarp sulked against Thundercracker, but he allowed the other to calm him down with soft touches.

"Anything else, Screamer?" Thundercracker asked.

"Keep playing nice with the Aerialbots. We might need them later."

* * *

"Boss, phone," Air Raid said, shaking Silverbolt awake gently.

"Huh?" Silverbolt said intelligently. "What time is it?"

"You don't want to know. Hot Spot wants to talk to you."

Silverbolt extracted himself carefully from the tangle of Aerialbots not quite ready to sleep by themselves. "Thanks," he said, taking the handset from Air Raid and moving into the living room. "Silverbolt here," he said into the phone.

"Want to trade?" Hot Spot asked.

"Trade?"

"Blades for…anyone. Anyone at all. I'll throw in First Aid if it gets you to take him off my hands."

"Hot Spot, is everything all right?" Hot Spot never wanted to trade brothers, even though Silverbolt had offered. More than once.

"Yes, no, somewhere in between." The Protectbot leader sighed over the phone. "Someone tried to mug First Aid." Upon their relocation to Los Angeles, First Aid had immediately found employment in the most dangerous hospital he could find. He wanted to make a difference.

"Is he hurt?" First Aid would cheerfully hand over his wallet to anyone who asked, but drug abusers didn't always ask first.

"No, Blades was with him."

Silverbolt winced. "Is the mugger still alive?"

"At the moment." Silverbolt didn't have to be able to see Hot Spot to know he was rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Luckily, Streetwise was the cop on duty, and there were witnesses willing to talk, so it got straightened out real quick. They should have taken him in. Let him spend a night in jail, see if that teaches him you can't just go around stabbing people!"

"It just might," Silverbolt said. Hot Spot sounded more upset than the situation really warranted, and Silverbolt surmised something else was going on. He tried to lighten the mood. "Well, I'll take Blades in exchange for all four of mine."

"All four? What happened?"

"Fireflight happened. Again. He broke his arm doing something stupid, and now they're sticking to him like sealant."

"What did he do?"

"He went walking around the bad part of town by himself after dark."

"Sounds like First Aid," Hot Spot said. "Did any of yours get arrested?"

"No," Silverbolt said. "The police out here only care about drivers."

"I have an idea," Silverbolt said after a moment of silence. "I'll trade all four of my Aerialbots for you."

Hot Spot chuckled. "Okay. Soon as Groove turns up so I can leave him in charge."

"He's still gone?"

"No, he showed up about a week ago to restock and say hi, but he left the next day."

"I'm sorry." Working opposite shifts from his brothers was hard enough. Silverbolt couldn't imagine one of them leaving for days on end, let alone with no idea where he was going, when he was coming back, or any way to contact him.

"It's how he copes. If I ask him to stay, he does, but then he's miserable. I can trust him to take care of himself."

"Really? I thought gestalt meant clingy little buggers."

"No, that's just yours. Does Slingshot sleep in his own bed yet?" Hot Shot teased.

"We take baby steps around here," Silverbolt said, absolutely deadpan. "We've just now gotten him to put away the binky."

Hot Spot laughed outright at that. "Oh, God, I needed that. Thank you." He sighed again. "I've missed you," he said quietly.

"I've missed you too," Silverbolt said back. "This hasn't been easy alone."

"You're preaching to the choir." Silverbolt didn't understand that, but Hot Shot was always picking up obscure human phrases. "I promise, one day I will call you at a sane hour, when there are no emergencies."

"Between the eight of them, there's always an emergency."

"I should let you go back to bed," Hot Spot said, reluctantly.

Silverbolt didn't want to hang up, but he worked a double tomorrow. He would live. "Yeah. Thanks for calling. It was good to hear from you." They exchanged reluctant goodbyes, and Silverbolt put the phone back on the charger, checked the lock on the door. When he got back into bed, Slingshot rolled over, still half-asleep, and pinned him. "Somthing happen?" Skydive slurred from somewhere in the pile.

"Hot Spot just had a bit of a bad day," Silverbolt told him. "Go back to sleep."

"'Kay." Skydive settled himself back down. Silverbolt wished he was half a continent away; his brothers might need him more, and he wouldn't trade them for the world, but Hot Spot deserved to be considered too. Even if he understood like no-one else, it simply wasn't fair.

* * *

Notes: A binky is a pacifier. Euchre is a card game, and around these parts it's real SRS BZNS. Answering your cell phone while pumping gas does not actually make your car explode. I have no idea how dangerous Los Angeles is, or how the police department works. I know too much about cops in Michigan. Liege Maximo was the first Deception commander according to certain canons. This chapter rewritten because hey, beta-readers aren't always a good thing.


	4. 4

Title: I Think It's Going to Rain Today 4/I don't even know how many. If my math's right, at the rate I'm going, 40.  
Author: akisawana  
Genre: Drama/Family, with guest appearances by Romance, Angst, Crack, and Oh God, Didn't I Swear I'd Never Do This?  
Disclaimer: I think you've got it by now.  
Warnings: Skywarp finally gets to play with boobs.  
Notes: Skywarp finally gets to play with boobs.  
Summary: Skywarp finally gets to play with boobs

* * *

Typing one-handed was so slow, Air Raid was typing for Fireflight just so the Mejier application was finished before the shopping. Fireflight sat in the chair next to the kiosk and thought about how strange it was that all the Aerialbots had blue eyes, even Skydive and Slingshot whose genetic types didn't match, Starscream and Skywarp didn't keep their red ones; instead they were brown. He thought it might have something to do with the range of colors human bodies could display, since Thundercracker's eyes remained their rare gold. But he knew nothing about fleshling biology, or how Megatron's super weapon had worked. Skydive and Air Raid had come out with respectable muscles, like most of the Autobots, Slingshot and Silverbolt had a certain wiry strength that wasn't readily apparent, but the ratios were all wrong. And Silverbolt's hair just didn't make any sense. Air Raid's nosecone was echoed in his black spikes, Slingshot had come out with a shaved head though he had grew it out quickly, Spike had referred to Skydive's original haircut as "jarhead" and even Fireflight's hair at first bore a resemblance to his true helmet, but Silverbolt's three-foot blonde ponytail baffled everyone. And he had never cut it. Fireflight guessed that Hot Spot must have said it was pretty or something along those lines.

He wished the Protectbots were here. Hot Spot had a way of making Silverbolt laugh a little louder that the other jets weren't really jealous of, and a way of making Silverbolt set aside work that they were. Perhaps with his fellow gestalt leader, Silverbolt wouldn't worry so much.

"Hey, Earth to 'Flight, Earth to 'Flight, come in 'Flight, over," Air Raid was saying.

"What? Oh, sorry."

Air Raid smirked at him. "Thinking about Thundercracker again?"

"No, Hot Spot."

"Hot Spot?"

"I was wishing he was here."

Air Raid nodded. "Me too. He could distract Silverbolt and then we could have some fun." He stood up and slung his arm around Fireflight's shoulders. "C'mon, let's go find the others." Fireflight let Air Raid lead him off towards the food half of the store. "I put you down as only available during the day," he said. "You don't want to be here at four in the morning."

"I don't want to be anywhere at four in the morning. I don't want there to be a four in the morning."

"Says the only guy who's up before me."

"I draw the line at five."

"Why five?"

Fireflight shrugged. "Seemed like a good number to me."

"Five is not a good number. Five is a prime number. Prime numbers are a pain in the aft."

"Yeah, but there's five of us."

"Six," Air Raid corrected.

"Six?"

"Six. Superion counts."

"But we're five parts of Superion," Fireflight pointed out.

"But five is a bad number."'

"Don't talk about him in public," Skydive said, coming down the aisle with a bag of apples. "Silverbolt doesn't like it."

"Silverbolt doesn't like anything," Air Raid said, but he did not mention Superion again. "Apples?"

"I like apples," Skydive said mildly.

"But did you have to get the green ones? They're so gross."

"So's coffee," Fireflight put in.

"They're over by the chips," Skydive said. "And if you don't like them, fine. More for me."

Silverbolt was reaching down a bag of potato chips when they found him. "Where's Sling?" Air Raid asked.

"Still by the shoes. He's convinced that he can find a pair of Converse in there somewhere." The gestalt leader shrugged. "Maybe he will, but we don't have time to wait around and watch him."

Skydive added the apples to the cart half-full of all the little things humans couldn't live without and call themselves civilized: shampoo, shaving cream, Midol, coffee filters.

* * *

Air Raid turned the blinds over the window and looked out. The sun was rising, reflecting off the green letters of the tall building across the street. The few clouds were thin and high, eddying across the sky the color of an Autobot's optics when he laughed. It would be a beautiful day, perfect for flying. Racing Slingshot or learning new tricks from Skydive or maybe even teaming up with Fireflight to get Silverbolt up there with them. He grinned, and reached out to open the window.

His arm, flesh and blood instead of steel, brought him back to cold reality, like being kicked in the midsection and shot between the wings and his spark ripped right out of his chest at the same time.

Air Raid staggered to the couch and collapsed on it, hands balled into fists and pressed against his eyes in a futile attempt to keep them from leaking. Biting his lip kept him from crying out worked better as pain ripped through him and ripped him apart. He'd never fly again, he hadn't in eight months, and he could barely remember the air rushing over his wings, the near zero-g of free fall, the glorious feel of shaking the shackles of gravity off and soaring across the heavens. The couch dipped as someone sat next to him. Silverbolt, he guessed when he was pulled against a chest that was soft rather than firm and a soothing hand passed through his hair. He leaned against his brother as the storm raged through him for the first time in weeks. It was as quick as it was intense, and when it passed, he looked up at Silverbolt. "It's gonna be a real nice day," he said, with a weak attempt at a smile. It was all he needed to say.

Silverbolt nodded, and smiled back, and pulled Air Raid a little closer. "I called Prime last night, while you were at work."

"Everything's still in a holding pattern?"

"No, actually. The scientists had a breakthrough."

"Wheeljack went a week without blowing anything up?"

Silverbolt had to pause and grin at him at that. "Well, that too. But they had a real breakthrough. They've managed to simulate restoring our sparks to our right bodies. Don't get too happy," he warned, before it could really sink in. "They haven't figured out how to restore control, so we'd starve to death, unable to move."

Air Raid twisted around to properly bear hug Silverbolt and kiss his cheeks. "Progress! Finally! They're making progress!" He bounced up and off towards the kitchen. "This calls for waffles!" Silverbolt followed him more calmly. Just like that, hope was restored to Air Raid, and all was right with his world. Were only it that easy for all of them.

* * *

The next time Air Raid and Slingshot headed across the hall to watch the hockey game, Fireflight went with them. Skywarp opened the door when they knocked. "You're late," he said. "You missed the face-off."

Slingshot breezed past him, unfazed. "So? No-one scored, did they?"

"No-good's in goal," Thundercracker said from the couch. "'Course not." He snagged Fireflight as the Aerialbot walked by and pulled him unceremoniously down. Fireflight squeaked as he fell and again as Thundercracker wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him against the Seeker. He looked to his brothers for help, but Slingshot just smirked and Air Raid handed him a soda.

Skywarp reached across Thundercracker and plucked the can from Fireflight's hand. "Lemme get that." He flicked the side of the can and cracked it open.

"Why'd you do that?" Fireflight asked as he accepted the can back.

Skywarp shrugged. "Not easy to open those things one-handed," he said lightly, but Fireflight thought he was hiding something.

"He meant your tapping compulsion," Thundercracker rumbled between them. "Skywarp picked up somewhere that if you do that, the can won't explode no matter how much someone has shaken it. I don't understand why he does it, since he's the only one immature enough to shake one up in the first place."

"It was hilarious," Skywarp defended himself.

"The first five times." Thundercracker caught Fireflight around the waist with his free hand. "Where do you think you're going?"

"I was just, um, going," Fireflight began, but Skywarp interrupted.

"Nope. Staying here. Air Raid, chips and salsa are in the kitchen." Thundercracker laughed when Skywarp manhandled Fireflight across their laps. Skywarp rested his chin on Fireflight's shoulder long enough to say, low so his brothers wouldn't hear, "I hear you like it here."

Air Raid flashed his wingmate two thumbs up as he fetched the snacks. All of the Aerialbots admired the Seekers for what they could do in the air, but Fireflight noticed more than his brothers. And what he noticed lead to the biggest crush on Thundercracker any of them had ever had, bigger even than Skydive's brief but intense infatuation with Perceptor. As long as Air Raid and Slingshot were there, they were going to make sure Fireflight took full advantage of the opportunity.

Skywarp let Fireflight go long enough to set his can on the ground, then pulled him back against his chest. "We're a team," he said softly. "You want him, you gotta put up with me."

"Okay." Fireflight leaned into Skywarp. Truthfully, he was a little scared of Skywarp; he wasn't as careful as Thundercracker, but he made Fireflight laugh and Thundercracker liked him well enough so he couldn't be all bad.

Thundercracker wrapped an arm around Fireflight's waist and slid his hand under the hem of his red tee shirt, fingers tracing little circles against his skin and setting off little shocks up his spine. Slingshot and Air Raid, oblivious, cheered on the hockey players and ate chips and salsa. Skywarp tilted his head and pressed against the side of Fireflight's neck a kiss so light, he didn't know what it was at first. When Skywarp flicked his tongue out to taste the Aerialbot's skin, Fireflight twitched in surprise.

"You okay, 'Flight?" Thundercracker asked, looking down at him. He cupped the side of Fireflight's face with his free hand as Fireflight nodded. The Seeker smiled. "Don't be…shy," was the word he settled on, and thoroughly kissed the blond in his lap.

Skywarp hummed against Fireflight's neck as he slid his hands up underneath the tee shirt. Fireflight was softer than either Seeker; his skin was smoother and he didn't have the hard muscles that male squishies did. His breasts were in some sort of metal and cloth contraption. There wasn't any room for Skywarp's fingers, but he found the clasp on the back. Skywarp hiked Fireflight's shirt up; the two fasteners were easy enough to figure out once he could see them.

Finally, after six weeks of trying, Skywarp had his hands on breasts.

Thundercracker was wrong. Breasts were fun. Especially the little round things that made Fireflight whimper into Thundercracker's mouth when he touched them. Skywarp licked the back of Fireflight's neck; a little sweet, a little salty, different from Thundercracker but not bad, not bad at all. Fireflight _mewled_ and pulled away from Thundercracker a tiny bit, just enough to lay his head against Thundercracker's shoulder and try to catch his breath. The Seeker ran a hand through his blond hair and whispered something Skywarp couldn't hear in his ear. Skywarp would bet that the shiver he felt run down Fireflight's spine was in response to it; Thundercracker's voice alone could melt glaciers. "Bedroom," Skywarp said. He wanted to see if breasts were like other parts of squishy bodies and more importantly, what noises he could get out of Fireflight if he had proper access.

"Bedroom?" Thundercracker asked Fireflight.

"Bedroom." Fireflight swung his feet down to the floor –and kicked his forgotten can of soda over, spilling it over Slingshot.

Slingshot swore. "Why are you so fragging clumsy?" he asked, jumping up. "I'll be right back," he said, heading for the door. "I gotta change my shirt now. Thanks, bro."

Thundercracker sighed and headed for the kitchen to fetch the paper towels and carpet spray. "I know why you're clumsy," Skywarp snickered. "What?" he asked at the looks the Aerialbots gave him. "He has that effect on me, too," he said, moving to help Thundercracker clean up. Air Raid rolled his eyes and dragged Fireflight over to the corner.

"Stay out here?" he asked.

"Why?"

"So's I can keep an eye on them."

Fireflight stood up straight, trying to use his two-inches-taller height to his advantage. "You don't need to keep an eye on them."

"'Course I do."

"I'm a big boy, Air Raid. I can take care of myself."

"I know," Air Raid said. "But I've gotta give them fair warning. It's my right. As a brother."

Fireflight looked like he wanted to argue, or at least like he wanted Air Raid to shut up, but Slingshot came back in with Skydive and, surprisingly, Silverbolt in tow. He must have said something when he went back to change; the Aerialbots surrounded Fireflight and didn't let the Seekers touch him for the rest of the game.

* * *

It wasn't hard for Air Raid and Slingshot to corner the Seekers a day later. It just took a lot of lurking in the stairwell. When the two came up, Air Raid and Slingshot were waiting, standing side-by-side across a step. Thundercracker suppressed a very human sigh of annoyance. He'd been up for fourteen hours, with neither food nor caffeine, thank you Skywarp and your goddamn libido, and only one rather stale cigarette. The last thing he wanted to do was deal with Skywarp's long-lost twin and…whatever Slingshot was. He was too irritated, tired, and cranky to come up with something witty. Grunting at him, he attempted to telepathically will them to get out of his way, before someone opened his mouth and the Seekers ended up kicked out of yet another apartment complex for suspicious bloodstains. They'd gotten better after the prostitute and Starscream in Atlantic City, but squishies, for all their faults, were pretty clever.

Skywarp, unfortunately, didn't pick up on his wingmate's brainwaves. Or he did and didn't care. Or he did and was being a sadistic bastard. "Hi, guys!" he positively chirped. "What's the haps?"

He couldn't strangle Skywarp. If he strangled Skywarp, there would be no one to make coffee in the morning.

Air Raid smiled, or at least showed his teeth. "We just thought we should have a little chat," he said. "About you two, and us, and our brother. Fireflight," he added unnecessarily.

"Isn't he a sweetie?" Skywarp gushed.

Maybe Fireflight knew how to make coffee. He seemed like a morning person or at least less of a zombie before noon than either of the two about-to-be surviving Seekers.

Slingshot growled in Skywarp's general direction, and took a step backwards to make himself taller. "That's not for you to find out."

Air Raid elbowed his brother. "He doesn't really mean that." Still grinning in that deranged way he added, "But we don't trust you. At all."

"Well, golly gee, why not?" Thundercracker closed his eyes. He was still sleeping. He was dreaming. He was never eating Chinese leftovers he couldn't remember ordering again.

"Because you're Decepticons!" Slingshot exploded. Complete with Dramatic Arm Flailing, from the sound of something soft clunking against the wall. Starscream, acknowledged master of that particular art, would never make that mistake. He stepped on Skywarp's foot to forestall the instant reaction; that was a conversation he wanted to have even less than the one they were currently having. And five seconds ago he wouldn't have thought such a thing possible. "How many times have you shot us?"

"No more than you've shot at us," Thundercracker grunted. "Besides, what are we going to do to him?"

"If he'd listen to me, nothing!" Thundercracker finally opened his eyes. Slingshot's hands were tightly balled into fists, the cords in his neck standing out from the physical effort to not launch himself at the two on the landing, his face red. "But you got him believing your lies and, and, deceptions! Because you're Decepticons!"

"Maybe you're not lying," Air Raid cut in smoothly. "Fireflight doesn't think so, and that's what really is important, isn't it? But," and here he started stalking towards Thundercracker in a way that registered as Megatron's Pissed Walk No. 14 (as Skywarp had termed it) before registering as vaguely threatening, "if you _are_ lying, we're going to kill you." Air Raid tried to stand on his toes to deliver that last line at something resembling eye level, but tripped and fell back flat-footed. "We clear?" he asked, and Thundercracker gave him points for not missing a beat.

The whole situation was laughable; he was being threatened for something he had no intention of doing by two sparklings who couldn't hurt him if they tried. But Thundercracker had been on Air Raid's end once before, and knew that this was a ritual that had to be completed, that this was Air Raid's and Slingshot's right as brothers, and he respected tradition at least, and anyone who had the manifolds to go head-to-head with the Decepticon's, and thus Cybertron's, most elite fliers. So he merely nodded, and forced a serious tone. "We're clear."

"Good," Air Raid said. "Dinner'll be ready by seven." He dragged Slingshot bodily away from his staring contest with Skywarp, and Thundercracker shook his head at the absurdity of it all, wondering if he was the last sane mech left.

As soon as the door closed behind the Aerialbots, Skywarp collapsed in a near-hysterical fit of laughter. "That, that, that was just cute!" he gasped finally. "They honestly think we'd be scared of them?"

"No," Thundercracker gritted. "They just had to do that. Get up."

Skywarp grinned cheekily up at him. "C'mon, TC, you gotta admit it was hilarious. Especially when Slingshot hit the wall. He's like a little Thrust. A little drunken Thrust."

"I am leaving you here, on this dirty floor, and I am going to get coffee. And if you are lucky, I will not remember to lock you out."

"Whatcha gonna do when Screamer sciences us back and you can't drink coffee anymore?" Skywarp asked, probably to be annoying.

"When we're back, I won't need coffee."

"Uh-huh," Skywarp said, not believing him. "He give you any sort of time when this is going to happen?"

"That would require him speaking to me, which would require him forgiving me for the last apartment, which probably isn't going to happen until something else happens to send him into a snit." Thundercracker unlocked the door and headed straight for the coffee pot. Starscream was frowning at the computer screen, talking to himself, and didn't bother to greet his wingmates beyond a vague mumbling about not wanting the Aerialbots running around underfoot while he was working sandwiched between some sort of chemical equation and a desire to do something physically impossible to Shockwave.

Across the hall, as soon as Air Raid walked in the door, Fireflight tackled him, demanding hugs and protection from "that crazy control-freak." Air Raid laughed and hugged him, but he could tell Starscream had put the fear of Primus into him.

* * *

When Skywarp showed up at the Aerialbots' apartment after work, the only ones home were Fireflight and Silverbolt, which didn't surprise him. What did was the uncharacteristic seriousness of Fireflight's face as he concentrated on writing something on a piece of paper in his lap. Waving to Silverbolt, who was cleaning the spotless kitchen, Skywarp flopped on the couch next to Fireflight and threw an arm over his shoulder. He couldn't help it; the Aerialbot's shoulders just fit the length of his arm perfectly. "Whatcha up to?"

"I'm filling out job apps," Fireflight said. He was biting his tongue in concentration as he filled out the form, writing slowly, and it still looked like a child's writing. Not that Skywarp's own handwriting was any better; Thundercracker had filled out his applications for him, to make them legible.

"Did you apply at my store? We're hiring for Hanukah."

"No," Fireflight said quietly. "I can't do on-line ones."

"Why not?"

Fireflight set his pen down and shrugged under Skywarp's arm. "I don't pass the personality test at the end. No-one ever calls."

"Well, that's easy enough to fix." Skywarp stood up and grabbed the Aerialbots' shared laptop, booting it up as he sat back down. "Here, fill it out, and I'll take the test for you. I passed, didn't I?"

Fireflight shook his head. "That's cheating."

"Hey, who's gonna know you better? Some ten minute multiple choice test, or me, who's known you your whole life?" He slid his arm around Fireflight again, and lightly stroked the bare skin of his arm. "They probably think you're too good to be true. Besides, it's not like they're hiring you in as a medic. They just want to make sure you're not going to steal things or punch people." Fireflight's eyes flicked to Silverbolt, who had moved to collecting dirty clothes from the bedrooms, and Skywarp knew he almost had him. "No-one will ever know. I promise."

Fireflight bit his lip. It was dishonest, and deceptive, but he needed a job. Sure, they could pay the bills without asking for help from the Ark, but that required three of them working overtime, and that just wasn't fair. Especially not when he didn't work and they were carrying him along, simply because he was too stupid, too clumsy to keep a job. They didn't say anything, but he could see the burden he was becoming in their eyes. It wasn't something he liked to think about but ignoring it would only make it worse. "Okay," he said.

"All right!" Skywarp said, hugging him.

Silverbolt came down the hallway then, with a basket of dirty laundry. "'Flight, did you finish those applications yet?" he asked.

"Skywarp was just showing me that his work was hiring," he said. "I thought if I worked there, I could get rides with him."

"That's a good idea." Silverbolt smiled. "I'll be right back."

By the time Silverbolt came back, the Best Buy application was done, and Fireflight was filling out the last of the paper ones. Skywarp had pulled out a gaming handheld, and was scowling at it, looking almost exactly like Air Raid. Silverbolt was surprised, and then ashamed that he was surprised. "Done," Fireflight said, setting the last one on top of the stack on the desk.

Skywarp flicked his game off and pulled Fireflight over for a hug. "Want us to take you out to drop them off when TC comes back? We can take you out to dinner and everything. It'll be fun!"

Fireflight looked at Silverbolt. "I don't know," he said. It sounded like fun, but he was beginning to second-guess his initial assessment of the Seekers as lonely, desperate and harmless.

"It's up to you. I'm going out to the store," Silverbolt said, not looking too happy. "Does anyone need anything?" The two on the couch both said no and Silverbolt left.

It was the first time Fireflight had been alone with Skywarp, not counting the few minutes Silverbolt was putting in the laundry, and he was nervous despite himself. He told himself that he was being silly, but the space between his wings itched anyways. "What just happened, cupcake?" Skywarp asked.

"Cupcake?" Fireflight repeated.

"Yup. Small and sweet. Just like you. Silverbolt got a problem with us or something?"

"No." Fireflight wondered what he had done to make Primus see fit to strip him of any and all dignity in front of Seekers. "He just," he hesitated, and that made Skywarp nuzzle his hair with his nose. It was easier to talk without Skywarp looking at him. "He doesn't want…he's worried. It's not safe."

"Well, yeah, but we'd take care of ya." Skywarp lay across the couch, and tugged Fireflight atop of him. He ran one hand through Fireflight's hair, liking its contrast against his black skin. "No worries there."

His head on Skywarp's chest, Fireflight could hear his heartbeat, so like and unlike a fuel pump. So like Thundercracker. "I can take care of myself," he murmured, half in protest.

"Where's the fun in that?" Skywarp wrapped his other arm around Fireflight's waist. "Don't worry about it, cupcake. TC'll talk sense into him." Secure in his faith in his wingmate, Skywarp saw no need for further reassurances. "You make him happy," he added. "There's not much that does." Fireflight blushed. He didn't make anybody, save for maybe his wingmates, happy; most of the Autobots considered him an annoyance at best, the ones who noticed him enough to complain. "Sometimes I think he likes being miserable. But he's just really picky." Skywarp rolled his eyes. "Too picky…you really impressed him, though. He can't stand people who just sit around and whine. Or boring people. Or anyone with wheels. Or anyone red. It's really quite a small list."

"I'm red," Fireflight said quietly. It had been ridiculous to be nervous, Fireflight decided. Skywarp was proving he could be careful when he chose, and the hand in his hair felt very nice indeed.

Skywarp shrugged. "Making an exception in your case, then. Toldja you impressed him. Have you ever been to Mongolian Barbeque?"

"I've never heard of it," Fireflight said, shaking his head.

"It's fun! We have to take you now. Soon as TC gets home." Skywarp yawned and hugged Fireflight. He had been up too late last night, up too early this morning, and Fireflight on top of him was warm. He'd just close his eyes for a minute…

* * *

Notes: Mejier is a store similar to WalMart in the range of products and services offered, but they pay their employees and do not allow personal beliefs to affect their product selection, i.e. they sell condoms. They also sell Chuck Taylors when the shoes are twenty dollars and not forty-three. (My bitterness, let me show you it.) No-good 'round these parts means Chris Osgood. Mongolian Barbeque is awesome and will be gone over in more detail next chapter. I swear, things will be explained at some point. It's in the outline and everything. If anyone had a prompt involving jets at Springkink that didn't get picked up, drop me a line and I'll grab it. Especially if it involves Starscream and/or Skyfire; I need practice with them. Questions, comments, concerns, criticisms, confessions, you know where to direct them.


	5. 5

Title: I Think It's Going to Rain Today 5/Way too many  
Author: akisawana  
Genre: Drama/Family, with guest appearances by Romance, Angst, Crack, and Oh God, Didn't I Swear I'd Never Do This?  
Disclaimer: I think you've got it by now.  
Warnings: Skywarp and pop music.  
Notes: Having found the source of the suck, I now must erase the ripples, which _sucks_.  
Summary: Having firmly established that Fireflight's life as a woman sucks eggs, I am going to wave my Magical Author Wand and make it all better.  
For a little while, at least.

* * *

When Silverbolt returned from the store, he found two seekers in his living room, shoes and jackets on, and Fireflight looking for clean socks. He calmly took his shoes off, calmly set his bags down, calmly counted to ten, and calmly resisted the urge to throw someone out a six-story window.

"Hiya," Skywarp said. "We're going out to dinner." He smiled his most disarming smile.

"Just the three of you?" Silverbolt asked Fireflight, who squirmed uncomfortably under his gaze.

"Yes?"

The Seekers picked up that something wasn't right and exchanged glances. "You don't mind, do you?"

Silverbolt started choosing his words carefully, trying to not make it obvious that he was trying to give his brother an out. Before he could say anything, though, Thundercracker rested his hands protectively on Fireflight's slumping shoulders and said, "We'll keep him safe."

"I'm sure he can keep himself safe," Silverbolt began, because aside from random gun-toting maniacs that was true, but Skywarp interrupted him.

"If it's because we're Decepticons," he said, and Thundercracker's hands visibly tightened on Fireflight's shoulders, "that doesn't matter, because we're not anymore."

"Let us take him out," Thundercracker added, "and we'll give you details."

"I'll be fine, 'Bolt," Fireflight said, and smiled. "It'll be fun. And we'll stop to drop off applications on the way."

Silverbolt folded his arms under his breasts, thinking. He thought about Slingshot coming in and telling him that Fireflight needed to be rescued, about Fireflight saying he'd get up in just "five more minutes," about Skywarp showing up last week to tell him that he had found Fireflight…and he was in the hospital. "I'm not going to stop you," he said finally. "You can make your own decisions." That pretty much locked Fireflight into going with them, but he had to hope he was reading Fireflight right and he wanted to go. He didn't _know_, not like he would with Superion around, and that bothered him like a tree branch in a wingflap.

Fireflight put his shoes and coat on, and they said their goodbyes. In the elevator, Skywarp looked at him and sighed dramatically. "I don't know how you put up with it," he said to Fireflight.

Fireflight shrugged. "That's just how big brothers are."

"No," Thundercracker shook his head. "That's how crazy overprotective brothers are. I was never that bad."

"Yeah, but you don't actually like Screamer." Thundercracker conceded the point, and took Fireflight's unwounded hand. Instead of pouting, Skywarp just put his arm around Fireflight's shoulders. "Either or, he's delusional. If we tried to hurt you, you'd clunk us over the head. Or kick us in the balls and run. Boobs whenever you want, don't have the universe's most poorly designed weak spot," Skywarp heaved a sigh, "I wish I was a woman."

Fireflight stood rooted to the spot, even as Thundercracker tugged on his hand. "Starscream's your brother? But that doesn't make any sense. You two don't get along at all."

"So? Just because we have the same creator doesn't mean I have to like the guy."

That was such a new concept to Fireflight he unthinkingly started walking, though Skywarp had to guide him around the raised flowerbed. "You have to love your brother. It's…it's…" Fireflight trailed off. Sure, there weren't that many sets of brothers among the Autobots, but all of them got along. He wasn't stupid; he knew that the Aerialbots were unusually close for brothers and for gestalt, and that the twins were not brothers so much as one mech with two bodies. But the Protectbots got along just fine, especially considering how different they were; it was almost as if Wheeljack had designed them to be diametrically opposed. And he didn't know if anyone else knew that Ratchet and Ironhide were brothers since they never made anything of the fact. He only knew because he had been in the medbay when Ratchet told Ironhide that was the only reason he hadn't been murdered yet.

"It's not," Thundercracker said quietly, unlocking the car. Skywarp held the door open for Fireflight, and got in the back. "Look," he said, pulling out and making a left where he shouldn't, "Rainmaker –that's our creator- brought him home right before I got my own place." He left out that Starscream's constant tagging along and suffocating imitation was the reason he left. "And he's been obnoxious his whole life. Yes, after that disastrous trip with Skyfire he got worse, but he's always been a cross-wired son of a glitch." A cross-wired son of a glitch who had made it his mission in life to take up anything Thundercracker was even mildly good at and do it better. "I barely knew him before the war." He pulled into the 7-11. "This one, right?"

Fireflight nodded. "I'll be right back," he said. He had turned in so many applications over the months, it no longer fazed him. Funny to think less than a year ago, this act required a good half-hour of mental preparation and a bribe of chocolate. Now it was just routine.

Actually, turning in job applications without throwing up was probably not a skill he should be so proud of.

Thundercracker smiled at him, reached over and squeezed his knee when he came back. "Jimmy Johns next?"

Fireflight nodded. "Are you wingmates because you're brothers?"

In the backseat, Skywarp snickered. "No. Somebody lost a bet."

"What!?"

Thundercracker sighed. "My last trine leader bet against me in," he paused to do some quick revision of history, "a race. He was rather upset that I won, and he thought that Starscream would get his revenge for him, either by killing me or getting me killed."

Skywarp laughed outright. "I wish I had been there to see the look on Starscream's face when you walked in."

"I don't know who was more surprised, him or I," Thundercracker agreed, parking the car. Fireflight had to wait in a bit of a line, and when he came back Skywarp reached around the seat to touch his shoulder, closer to clinging than squeezing. Fireflight wondered, suddenly, if Skywarp had thought he might not come back; he told himself that was silly, Skywarp wasn't that insecure, but the impression remained. "Where were you, Skywarp?" Fireflight asked.

"I wasn't part of their trine yet," he said. "Their third was a mech named Dreadwing. I think he was the last thing they agreed on."

"What do you mean?"

Thundercracker finished changing lanes before he answered. "We didn't like him. He was, well. You know Cliffjumper?"

Fireflight nodded.

"He was Cliffjumper's evil twin." Skywarp cackled in the backseat. Though he had never met the mech, he had certainly heard stories, and the appellation didn't quite do him justice. "When he died, it came out that Starscream and I share a creator," Thundercracker continued, ignoring his wingmate. "Megatron sent Skywarp to spy on us, make sure we weren't conspiring against him."

"He shouldn't have worried," Skywarp laughed. "They'll argue for hours over the stupidest things. Screamer has single-handedly almost talked TC into quitting a thousand times."

"It's got nothing to do with him," Thundercracker grumbled. "I don't care what they say, it's better to scare them into running away than kill them."

"And then there's all the times TC's tipped Megatron off to whatever Screamer's up to."

"Were he to rule the Decepticons, this slagging war would never be over," Thundercracker pointed out.

"Really, Megatron would have figured it out even if Dreadwing hadn't had a quick drop and a sudden stop. It's a miracle they haven't killed each other."

"If you kill your brother, you go straight to the Pit," Thundercracker sing-songed sarcastically. Checking over his shoulder to change lanes again, he caught sight of Fireflight's face. The Aerialbot's eyes looked damn near to falling out of his head. Once the car was safely in the new lane, next to rather than behind the semi, he touched Fireflight's knee again. "We're not going to lie to you," he said gently. "And it's not as bad as he makes it sound."

"Mostly they just ignore each other," Skywarp said cheerfully. "One time, on that planet with all the snakes, they refused to talk to each other. It was hilarious! Screamer would be all, 'tell your idiot buddy it's his turn to fly patrol,' and TC would pretend he didn't hear him, and then when I told him he'd go, 'tell the Air Commander that he's blown himself up one too many times if his geeky aft thinks it's that easy to trick me into taking his shift.' The best part was our base was just this little hanger, so they were in the same room the whole time! If they weren't careful, their wings would touch and then—"

"Enough, 'Warp," Thundercracker said.

Fireflight giggled. "Once, Slingshot and Air Raid got into a fight, and Air Raid decided he was going to be the bigger mech and just ignore Slingshot. And while he was explaining this to 'Bolt and 'Bolt was praising him for being mature about it, Ratchet came in spitting nails because Slingshot had worked himself up so much over being ignored he overheated to the point that some of his circuits melted. The doctor said next time to just punch him, it was easier to fix!"

Skywarp howled in the back seat, and even Thundercracker laughed. "Your brothers are special," he said.

"Yes, they are," Fireflight agreed, though the Seekers couldn't tell if he had picked up on the undertones. Probably not.

In the parking lot, Skywarp bounded out of the car almost before it stopped, and opened Fireflight's door for him with a bow. Thundercracker took Fireflight's hand again, and that made him feel a little better. Still, it was strange to be out in public without his brothers. He told himself that he was being silly, as he clutched his purse closer, that he was only imagining the stares and the target painted on his back. Air Raid would have laughed if he had been there, laughed and thrown an arm around his shoulders and made it clear to the rest of the room just who Fireflight was with. Slingshot would walk behind him and scowl at anyone who dared to look too long, scare off anyone who wished his brothers harm. Skydive didn't look as scary as the other two, but he had a knack for talking his way out of every situation and making anyone and everyone leave them alone with a smile. And Silverbolt, commander since birth, could just tell someone to lay off, and they would. Even Cliffjumper.

It was ridiculous, he told himself, barely noticing that the Seekers had lead him to a booth, that Thundercracker had sat between him and the rest of the room, or that Skywarp was talking to the waitress. People went out to restaurants without terrible things happening all the time. There was absolutely nothing to worry about. He was a fully trained and perfectly capable Autobot warrior and a big boy and who was he kidding? He couldn't even walk down a street by himself without ending up in the emergency room.

"…Fireflight, you with us?" Thundercracker was calling him, he realized, and had been for how long?

"Sorry," he said sheepishly.

"S'okay," Thundercracker said. "We got you root beer. Is that okay?" Fireflight nodded, and Thundercracker twisted open the bottle for him.

"Thank you," Fireflight said, smiling shyly.

"You're welcome," Thundercracker smiled back, and Skywarp laughed at the display in front of him. Thundercracker flipped him the bird, but that only made Skywarp laugh harder.

"C'mon, let's get food," he said, taking a swig of soda from his bottle. "What?" he asked.

"That's…neon green," Fireflight said slowly.

"It's just food coloring," Thundercracker said.

"Yeah, TC's drinking pink stuff. Humans like to color their drinks. Makes them feel more like a man or something. Can we get food now?" Skywarp asked plaintively.

"Get food?" Fireflight asked.

"You'll see." The Seekers stood up, and led Fireflight to the back of the restaurant. "You take a bowl," Thundercracker explained, handing him a wooden one, "and you put food in it, and over there you get a cup for sauce. And then they stir-fry it."

"With swords," Skywarp added. "It's really cool!"

"Sounds really cool!" Fireflight chirped. He put fish in his bowl, because he'd never had fish before.

"You can come back as many times as you want," Thundercracker said, taking steak for himself, "so don't be afraid to experiment."

Fireflight nodded, and at the vegetable bar took some vegetables he knew he would like. For sauce, he took something called "lemon pepper;" he had heard lemon went with fish. An employee directed them to stand at a circular counter, behind which there was a metal circle, nearly ten feet across, surrounded by men with swords. The men took the customer's food and cooked it on the metal disk, using the swords to flip and stir the ingredients. As much entertainment as food preparation, they joked with each other and the customers, and whenever a customer tipped them a gong was rang.

Fireflight had never seen anything like it before. It was new and interesting and cool –and also terribly, terribly loud; all he could think was that someone could come up behind him, and his brothers weren't there to watch his back.

He wasn't alone, though. Thundercracker leaned up against the counter next to him, watching the crowd, and Skywarp stood behind him, his arms around Fireflight's waist. "Toldja it was cool, cupcake," he said, kissing Fireflight's hair.

"It is," Fireflight said, giggling a little.

* * *

They stayed at the restaurant for nearly three hours, long enough for Skywarp to try everything at least twice, except for the squid. Fireflight noticed that Thundercracker got the same thing every time, steak and potatoes and soy sauce, and that Skywarp always seemed to be ready for a new bowl when Fireflight was. He didn't notice that Thundercracker kept turning the conversation back to Fireflight, or that Skywarp was laying it on with a trowel. He'd been chatted up and flirted with before, but never double teamed like this, with Thundercracker asking questions, deep ones (but never deep enough to hurt) and Skywarp calling him anything he could think of, smart or funny or cute. To be fair, the Seekers didn't lie, just pointed out things that were more or less obvious; this was a technique they had practiced over centuries, and Fireflight, less than twenty years old, didn't stand a chance.

They left the restaurant, and Thundercracker put a CD in the car's player. "Oh, man, not this slag," Skywarp complained.

"What don't you like about it?" Thundercracker asked. "The part where the lead singer isn't kicked in the testicles before the song starts or the part where they're wearing pants?"

Fireflight giggled. "I kinda like it," he said, bobbing along to the music unconsciously. "What's their name?"

"It's Fall Out Boy's first album. It's actually their second, but they like to pretend the first one doesn't exist. I have their new one at home, if you want to hear it."

"Are they the ones with the baseball song?"

"The baseball song," Skywarp snorted from the back seat.

"Do you actually think that's funny, or do you just like to make fun of my music?" Thundercracker asked. "And yes, that's on their second album. The third one is new."

"Is that the one with the sheep?" Skywarp asked. "'Cause if it is, they have the best song title ever. 'I've Got a Dark Alley and a Bad Idea That Says You Should Shut Your Mouth.' "

"I thought your favorite song title ever was, 'The Only Difference Between Matyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage'?"

"Naw, that's just the truest thing a fleshbag's ever said."

"Is that a Fall Out Boy song too?" Fireflight asked.

"No," Thundercracker said, "that's Panic at the Disco."

"I know that band! 'I chime in, haven't you people ever heard of, closing the goddamn door,' right?"

"Yeah." Thundercracker smiled. "That's them. I'd have thought they were a little cynical for you, though."

Fireflight shrugged. "It's happy music, as long as you don't pay too much attention to the words. But I might just like them in self-defense." He laughed. "I worked at a Subway once with someone who really liked this sort of music."

"Liking music to preserve your sanity," Skywarp mused. "Hey! You tricked me!"

"What the hell are you on about?"

"You," Skywarp accused, waggling a finger at Thundercracker, "made me like Peruvian Death Metal solely to keep from losing my mind!"

"First off, I didn't like Peruvian Death Metal, Starscream did. Second off, you can't lose what you don't have."

"Peruvian Death Metal?"

"Trust me," Thundercracker said, "you don't want to know." He turned up the music, over Skywarp's squawking about how he wasn't the crazy one, and at least he had musical taste.

No-one said anything when they got back to the apartment building, though Fireflight was humming. Thundercracker let them in, but the silence stayed with them in the elevator and down the hall. "Thank you for dinner," Fireflight said, suddenly shy. "It was…I had fun."

"Did you want to hear the new CD?" Thundercracker asked.

"Yeah! I mean. If you guys don't mind?"

"Wouldn't have asked if we did, cupcake."

Fireflight nodded and opened the door. "Lemme just tell Silverbolt so he doesn't come looking for me."

Skywarp and Thundercracker exchanged glances, but all Thundercracker said was, "You're lucky you've got brothers who look out for you so much."

Fireflight ducked in. His brothers were watching a movie and eating popcorn. Silverbolt saw him, and joined him in the kitchen. "How was dinner?"

"Great!" Fireflight smiled like he hadn't in a long time, truly happy rather than momentarily amused. "Thundercracker wanted me to hear a CD. Can I?"

Silverbolt did not smile back. "Hear a CD? Do you not remember Skydive's warning?"

"It's an actual CD," Fireflight said. "And I still think they're just very lonely. We can call all the Autobots any time we want. They only have themselves, and it's not working out, they were saying."

"Well, I trust your judgment," Silverbolt said, because at the end of the day he _did. _Hormones must be getting to him. "But before you go, I have to tell you something about males and females…"

When Fireflight came out five minutes later, he was so red it looked like it hurt. "You alright, cupcake?" Skywarp asked, giving the Aerialbot a one-armed hug.

"Yeah," Fireflight muttered. "Just heard some things about Silverbolt I did not need to know. Where'd Thundercracker go?"

"He went to set it up. You sure you're alright?"

"What happened?" Thundercracker asked as Skywarp settled into his usual spot against the arm of the couch, Fireflight curled against him with his bad arm resting on the back of the couch.

"Nothing happened. Really."

"Fireflight." Thundercracker knelt on the ground in front of him, at eye level. "You were smiling when you went in, and you weren't when you came out. We like you happy, so what happened?"

"I just didn't need to know what Silverbolt and Hot Spot did when they were alone."

Skywarp laughed, and Thundercracker sighed. "Don't worry us like that, brownie."

"Cupcake," Skywarp corrected.

"Whatever." Thundercracker stood up and turned on the stereo, then sat back down on the couch, sandwiching Fireflight in. Fireflight didn't seem to mind, even reaching out to take Thundercracker's hand, the first time he had initiated any sort of contact. Pleased, Thundercracker rubbed Fireflight's knuckles with his thumb. Just this was nice, he thought, sitting on the couch with Skywarp and Fireflight. It was probably as good as it was going to ever get. Definitely as good as it had ever been the last almost-year. He should resign himself to this, he thought. Humanity was his fate, chained to this dying planet for not even a vorn; no use dreaming about the freedom of the skies.

Skywarp picked up on Thundercracker's mood easily. After so many million years, he subconsciously noticed the least signs of his wingmate slipping into broodiness, which unchecked usually lead through moodiness and moping to full on depression.

And even though he didn't know what to call it when his wingmate was in the middle of a major depressive episode, the few times it had happened scared Skywarp, scared him enough that even momentary melancholy was to be avoided at all costs. "We need to distract him," he whispered in the Aeriabot's ear.

Fireflight, too, had noticed the frown Thundercracker wasn't even trying to hide, the distance in his eyes, and the all-too-familiar twitch of a jet who had lost his wings. He tugged Thundercracker's hand to catch his attention, and when he had it Fireflight gave him his very brightest smile. "I like this CD," he said. "I like it a lot. It's very," he paused to think.

Thundercracker interrupted him. "The simple plinkings of innocent children. Pretty clouds without substance. There's potential in it, yes," he allowed sourly, "but it's so rough, so unpracticed, you can't hear what they're saying for the noise. Give them the experience of twenty years and they'll possibly be worth something, if they don't sell out to feed themselves, or kill themselves with drugs, or lose it because they don't know what they have. As is, it's the next thing to meaningless babble."

"A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?" Fireflight quoted.

Skywarp laughed. "You're real smart, cupcake, to understand him. Primus knows I can't. But don't listen. He's just being mopey 'cause all his good stuff is six miles under." He reached around Fireflight to grab Thundercracker's other hand and pull him closer.

Fireflight took the hint and slowly, giving Thundercracker plenty of time to back away, pressed against him in as close as an embrace as he could get with both hands occupied. "I'm sorry," he said. "I can't imagine how much that sucks."

"It's not your fault, Fireflight," Thundercracker rumbled somewhat awkwardly. How long had it been since he was the comforted instead of the comforter? "Don't worry about it." He let go of Fireflight's hand and cupped the back of his head, stroking his blonde hair, and the familiar motion grounded him a little. "Human music isn't really so bad, compared to some I've heard."

"But it's not your music," Fireflight said earnestly, tilting his head back to look Thundercracker straight in the eye. "And I can see how much that upsets you. I wish I could do something to make you feel better." He wasn't just saying it, Thundercracker could tell. Were he still a mech, hope would have lightened his optics to almost-white without actually increasing their brightness. The human eyelids converted optic signals surprisingly well, if somewhat metaphorically and less precisely; Thundercracker couldn't doubt the way Fireflight's eyes widened, with the slightest tightness underneath.

"You can," Skywarp said. "Let him play with your boobies."

"What!" the other two said at the same time. Skywarp rolled his eyes.

"We've tested it two hundred times. When a human starts thinking about sex, he stops thinking about everything else, and sex makes you happy."

"You just want to get your hands on his tits again," Thundercracker grumbled, pulling Fireflight closer and wrapping his arms around the Aerialbot protectively and only half-mockingly.

"So everyone wins!"

"You cannot be serious. What did I ever do to deserve you?"

Skywarp knew that was a common thing for Thundercracker to wonder. Sometimes hourly, and he grinned. The mere suggestion had been enough to irritate Thundercracker back to the here-and-now, annoyed about things he could change rather than worrying about things he couldn't.

Fireflight, however, hadn't spent enough time around the Seekers to know this, and he slipped off of Thundercracker's lap. "Where ya going, cupcake?"

"I don't think the couch is big enough for all three of us," he said, a little shyly, but without hesitating at all.

* * *

Afterwards, Fireflight lay warm and safe between his two new lovers, warm and safe and feeling better than he had since the last time he flew. He wished he could stay; he always liked the feeling afterwards, wanted to hold onto it as long as he could.

But Skydive had warned him, and he wanted to talk it over with his gestalt-mates. Something about everything to do with the Seekers felt just slightly off.

He sighed and sat up. "F'rflight?" Skywarp mumbled, and threw a sleep-heavy arm across his legs. "Wha?"

"I should go," he said.

Thundercracker sat up as well. "Should?" He tilted his head. "You don't want to." It wasn't a question.

"Don't, then," Skywarp said, still half-asleep. "Stay 'long as y'want."

"We like seeing you happy," Thundercracker said with a smile. "Stay as long as you want." He turned the bedside light out, and lay back down, then reached up and squeezed Fireflight's shoulder.

Fireflight lay down automatically, not expecting such a response that was both mild _and_ positive. Skywarp made a pleased little noise and burrowed close up against his back, then went back to sleep. "Why?" Fireflight asked finally.

"You make us happy." Thundercracker stroked Fireflight's arm, side, hip, whatever he could reach. "So happy. We just want to repay the favor."

Fireflight thought he might be lying, that at the very least they weren't happy so much as momentarily amused, but he told himself that was just Slingshot's voice in his head, trying to protect him from something that might even not be true. "But you make me, when I'm around you guys," Fireflight didn't quite know how to finish the statement.

"Hey," Thundercracker said gently, "you want to be part of us. I want you to be part of us. Skywarp wants you to be part of us –he'd tell you himself, but you wore him out pretty damn well. Where's the problem? We're not gonna kick you out, we're not playing you or we would have. But," he added as an afterthought, "we're not gonna make you stay if you don't want to. We're only asking you to stay as long as you're happy."

Fireflight knew he shouldn't believe him, knew that Thundercracker was very likely lying. After all, the two whose bed he was currently in had tried to kill him since the day he came online, and if that wasn't reason enough to stay away, what was? Still, humanity seemed to have changed them, changed them for the better, and Fireflight wanted to stay, wanted it very badly indeed. The past month or so, they had been so kind, and especially the past week, and he didn't think they'd be faking it –what motiviation could they have? He laid his head on Thundercracker's shoulder.

"Okay," he said. "I'm staying. Okay."

* * *

Jones Soda is tasty, and does in fact come in green. Skywarp does not actually know what Fall Out Boy songs are on which albums, and he vastly prefers seventies glam rock (thanks Toast!) I did not make any of those song titles up. (and I was totally listening to them before they were cool!) Next chapter will have explanations, if Air Raid doesn't spend the whole time trying to get all the sordid details (which will be relevant later.)


	6. 6

Title: I Think It's Going to Rain Today 6/Shoot me. Shoot me now.  
Author: akisawana  
Genre: Drama/Family, with guest appearances by Romance, Angst, Crack, and Oh God, Didn't I Swear I'd Never Do This?  
Disclaimer:  
Warnings: Air Raid. Slingshot and a case of beer. Air Raid. Skywarp. AIR RAID.  
Summary: Aerialbots fight, Thundercracker redefines grouchy, and Silverbolt's day takes a turn for the strange.  
Notes: It's really hard to not italicize every other word out of Starscream's mouth.

* * *

Fireflight woke when the alarm clock went off at quarter after six, but Thundercracker grabbed him before he could get up and rolled on top of him. "Five more minutes," he mumbled into Fireflight's hair. Skywarp kissed both of them and headed out the door, grabbing clothes out of a laundry basket on the way. Fireflight listened to him rattling around the kitchen and heard him talking to Starscream, but couldn't hear what they were saying.

"Rise and shine, TC," Skywarp said when he came back in with a huge travel mug of coffee –it must have held the whole pot.

"No." Thundercracker wrapped himself tighter around Fireflight. Too tightly; Fireflight waved frantically to Skywarp, unable to talk or even breathe.  
Skywarp set the mug on the dresser. "You're cutting off Fireflight's air!" he said, whacking Thundercracker with a pillow.

"Sorry," he said, grabbing the pillow and rolling over to strangle that instead.

"You alright, sparkles?" Skywarp asked, sitting on the bed and stroking Fireflight's hair.

Fireflight leaned into the touch, and moved his head to Skywarp's lap. After last night, it didn't seem too forward. "Sparkles? I thought I was cupcake?"

"No," Skywarp grinned. "Cupcakes aren't as good when they're naked. Doesn't fit you." He ruffled Fireflight's hair. "I'm gonna jump in the shower. If you're feeling brave, you can try getting that one to move." He stood up and flashed Fireflight a grin. "Don't get discouraged if you can't, though. He's just as bad as that little brother of yours." Skywarp kissed Fireflight's head, right where he had been stroking, and left for the shower.

Fireflight rolled over and looked at Thundercracker. The older seeker was hunched around his mug of coffee, inhaling the fumes in a way very reminiscent of Slingshot. His eyes weren't even open yet, just like Slingshot when he was hungover. He giggled a little at the thought, and Thundercracker opened his eyes, blinking as he tried to find the source of the sound. Fireflight giggled again, but stopped abruptly when Thundercracker pinned him with a very Decepticon stare. Fireflight giggled a third time, but this one was nervous, and he drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. He held his breath, suddenly feeling like nothing so much as a tiny sparrow in the sights of some great raptor.

Thundercracker blinked, and reached out to touch Fireflight's arms. He blinked again, more sleepily, and said the first vaguely reassuring thing that popped into his head. "You have beautiful eyes." Fireflight relaxed a little, at the way Thundercracker's eyes stopped giving him that terrible, terrible stare more than anything else, and Thundercracker used the opportunity to tug him closer. Setting his coffee back on the dresser, Thundercracker pulled Fireflight back down, curled around him, and went back to sleep.

That's when Skywarp started singing. Loud and off-key.

Thundercracker, without really waking up, grabbed Skywarp's pillow and plonked it over his and Fireflight's head. Now thoroughly trapped, Fireflight couldn't really do anything but shrug mentally and take the opportunity to cuddle closer to Thundercracker.

Some five or fifteen minutes later, Skywarp woke Fireflight again. Fireflight blinked sleepily as Skywarp set his clothes in a pile on the bed, now short one Thundercracker. "You're welcome to stay and sleep in, sparkles, but Screamer's gonna be here all day, and TC doesn't trust him alone with you. In case you missed all the screaming and punching and eye-blackening the other day." Skywarp grinned at Fireflight's wide-eyed look. "We gotta go to work, sorry."

"It's okay," Fireflight assured him. "I should have gone home last night." He bit his lip. "I hope they didn't stay up waiting…"

"Well, they better get used to it," Skywarp said, turning to the mirror to fuss with his hair. "You're comfy. Also, good protection from Thundercracker and his Elbows O'Doom."

"Elbows of doom?" Fireflight asked, getting dressed.

"I do not have elbows of doom," Thundercracker said. "You're making shit up."

"You're also a freak. Who manages to shower in less than five minutes?"

"You're the freak, 'Warp. How are you this awake without coffee?"

The familiarity of this scene was beginning to be surreal. How many times had Air Raid and Slingshot had this essential conversation? Fireflight pulled his clothes on one-handed, a little clumsily still, and he skipped his bra entirely. His purse and shoes were where he had left them in the living room, and Skywarp hugged him when he sat down to put them on. Thundercracker appeared to have fallen asleep against the door.

"You are really not a morning person," Fireflight said, grinning.  
Thundercracker just grunted at him. The three of them walked together to the elevator, and Skywarp kissed Fireflight positively indecently, not even coming up for air until the doors opened and Thundercracker yanked him inside.

"We'll see you later," he said, and even half-awake, those four words were heavy with promise.

Skywarp hummed a silly little tune all the way down to the parking lot. Thundercracker gave him the hairy eyeball. "What?" Skywarp asked.

"Laying it on a bit thick, were you?"

"Aw, c'mon," Skywarp grinned. "He loves it."

* * *

In the Aerialbot's apartment, Slingshot was watching a rerun of Law and Order, several empty cans of beer on the floor by his feet. "Hey," Fireflight said softly.

"Well, look who decided to grace us with his presence," Slingshot spat. "Have fun last night?"

"Yes," Fireflight said, smiling and kicking his shoes off. "They're really nice, when they're not trying to kill you."

"They're Decepticons!" Slingshot exploded. "They're always trying to kill you! Unless you're sucking their –you did! You, you had interface with them!"

"I didn't, I mean. I kinda did but Slingshot…" Fireflight trailed off as Slingshot's face turned red and he stood up.

Still shorter than Fireflight, but he was angrier than Fireflight had seen him in months, and coming right towards him. Fireflight froze, his purse a flimsy barrier in the face of his wingmate's righteous fury.

"Wreckers, Minibots and now Decepticons?" he hissed, stopping just short of touching Fireflight. "Really, Fireflight, you've outdone yourself this time. Every time I think you can't possibly sink any lower you –"

"Slingshot." Silverbolt cut him off with a single cold word. In the hallway behind him, Skydive was staring with a half-awake, half-horrified expression and Air Raid was trying to get around the immovable air commander. "Come here."  
Even after six cans of beer, Slingshot wasn't able to disobey that voice. He followed Silverbolt into the bedroom, and Silverbolt closed the door behind them with a quiet but firm click that said more than any slam.

Silverbolt leaned against the door and listened, not to what Slingshot was saying, because that usually made him want to take the smaller Aerialbot and shake him until he broke, but to what he wasn't saying. What he was going out of his way not to say. Slingshot ranted for fifteen minutes without pausing to breathe about Fireflight's poor taste in mechs, his stupid blind trust in anything that moved, and his masochistic tendencies before moving on to what was really bothering him.

"An' what the hell's so great about them anyways?" he demanded. "Not like they can fly anymore or anything. They're just going to get him in trouble."

"You're right," Silverbolt said quietly.

"I am?" Slingshot said, shocked.

"Yes," Silverbolt said, leading Slingshot towards his bed with a hand on his brother's shoulder. "But freedom is the right of all sentient beings," he quoted, "and that includes the freedom to do stupid things. Did you stay up all night?"

Slingshot allowed Silverbolt to push him down gently and pull the blankets over him. "He's gonna get hurt."

"And when he does," Silverbolt said, "he's going to need us." He sighed and smoothed the blanket over Slingshot's shoulders. "I don't like it anymore than you do. You should get some sleep."

"They're gonna hurt him," Slingshot repeated, since Silverbolt clearly didn't get it. "Like a tree."

Silverbolt didn't think so, but he knew that was mostly wishful thinking. "Let me worry about that," he told his wingmate firmly. "Sleep." He stayed with Slingshot until Slingshot fell asleep, all twenty minutes.

When Silverbolt left the room, though, he wasn't worrying about Fireflight.

Air Raid had a stack of blueberry pancakes already, and was making more. Someone had made coffee, and Fireflight was doing something that involved two knives that were sharper than Silverbolt was really comfortable with and a very mutilated pancake, chattering brightly about stir-fry. Skydive had disappeared.

Silverbolt removed the knives from Fireflight's hands without saying anything and tossed them in the sink. He did not want to know. He was not going to ask. There were far more important issues at hand. "What were you doing to that poor pancake?"

In his defense, he wasn't going to get much done until the question was answered.

"It's what they were doing last night!" Fireflight explained.

Clearly, this morning called for coffee. Lots of coffee. Air Raid, well familiar with the many flavors of Confused Silverbolt, handed him a cup. Silverbolt shoved the worrying observations of what humanity had done to Air Raid next to the worrying observations of what life had done to Slingshot and, under the cover of savoring his coffee, regrouped and focused on the whole issue of Fireflight, Decepticons, and, apparently, knives. "Who was doing what last night?"

"We went to this restaurant," Fireflight started, "actually, first we went to drop off applications and did you know that Thundercracker and Starscream are brothers? Then we went to this place," he continued without really giving Silverbolt time to process that little nugget," and it was a restaurant and you got a bowl full of stuff like carrots and squid and peanuts and they put it on a huge plate with fire in the middle and chopped it up with big knives until it was cooked. And then you ate it. And there was neon-green soda that told Skywarp to clean his room."

"Wait. Go back. Squid? What's squid?"

So Fireflight went back, and with the help of coffee and blueberry pancakes, Silverbolt managed to tease out that "they" with the knives were employees of the restaurant, not the Seekers, that squid was a fish with suction cups, and that Skywarp had a habit of interrupting Thundercracker every time Cybertron was mentioned and changing the subject.

"It was really obvious, too. He really didn't want Thundercracker to talk about Cybertron at all, which was weird because he accidently brought it up a couple of times."

By this time, Silverbolt and Fireflight were doing the dishes, Air Raid was in the shower, and Skydive had performed the traditional Five Minute Dance of I Forgot I Had Work Today back at the point with the yams. "Why do you think was that?" Silverbolt asked.

Fireflight paused to consider. Silverbolt recognized the familiar tilted head and glassy-eyed stare that meant his wingmate was replaying the last night in his head, fast-forwarding through most of it but going over the relevant parts byte-by-byte. "I think it was personal," he said. "Sometimes he'd let Thundercracker get a little way through the story before he'd interrupt. And if Thundercracker said something like "that was the year they banned nitros," Skywarp wouldn't interrupt, but if he said something like "that was two months before I moved," Skywarp wouldn't even let him finish where he moved to. I think it was really big. Can I be a Seeker and an Aerialbot? I don't want to be anything that means I have to stop being an Aerialbot."

"I don't think you can stop being an Aerialbot," Silverbolt said, wondering when things were going to start making sense again. "Where did this come from?"

"Thundercracker said that the two of them wanted me to be part of "us," but he didn't say what "us" he meant." Fireflight tried to make air quotes around each "us," but used all his fingers.

Silverbolt paused to consider. "I think he just meant he didn't want it to be a one-time deal."

"Oh. I told him I wanted to stay. Was that okay?"

It was not okay. Silverbolt needed to tell him it was not okay and he should stop this right now.

"I _do_ trust your judgment," Silverbolt said. "I'm sorry, Fireflight, I think I caught your hormone thing. I don't know why they're rubbing me the wrong way, but you've spent the most time with them out of all of us." And while Fireflight could miss oceans, when it came to other people he'd never been wrong (aside from the whole chronosphere incident, but that just might have been when the seed was planted.) He closed the dishwasher and started it. Then he opened it, put the dishwasher soap in, and closed it again. Fireflight, who had handed him the jug, put it away.

"Are you okay?" Fireflight asked him.

"Yeah," he smiled at his teammate. "We were just up late last night. There was a House marathon."

"Reruns?" Fireflight asked, shadowing Silverbolt as he picked up the accumulated mess of four Aerialbots.

"Yeah," Silverbolt confirmed, throwing empty soda cans in a trash bag already half-full.

"Were you …waiting up for me?" Of course they had waited up for him. What sort of brothers would they be if they let one of their own into the lion's den and then gone to sleep? More importantly, what sort of brothers would they be if they didn't get every last detail as soon as possible about a night with their idols? But something in Fireflight's voice made Silverbolt think that he wanted the answer to be no, his brother's didn't stay up waiting for him, Slingshot all night, and that meant it was okay that he didn't come home until nearly seven the next morning.

"They were first-season episodes," Silverbolt side-stepped. Let Fireflight take that as he would, either the four had watched them because they didn't remember how they ended, or that it was the only thing on while they waited up. Fireflight would assume whatever made him happier. He always did.

Air Raid bounded out of the bathroom then, cutting the conversation short. "Details!" he demanded, dragging Fireflight over to the couch.

Silverbolt didn't particularly want to hear Fireflight rehash the last night with play-by-play color commentary by Air Raid, so he headed for the shower instead. He misjudged either Air Raid's curiosity, or how much detail Fireflight would go into, or something, because when he came out of the shower forty-five minutes later (maybe that was what he misjudged?), Fireflight was saying, "no, Skywarp's penis was definitely bigger than that."

"But you said it was smaller than a can of soda. You can't have it both ways."

"It's taller, but it's not that thick."

"You're not describing it very well," Air Raid said.

"Well, it kept changing size," Fireflight protested. "They do that, you know."

"Raider, are you still going to the movies today?" Silverbolt said, cutting off that entire line of conversation. Hopefully Air Raid would forget.

"Yeah, me and Slingshot are meeting Skydive there after work. Don't worry, we'll be home by six. Can I brush your hair?"

Fireflight looked like he was going to say something, but was ambushed by a yawn. "Go to bed," Silverbolt said. "I hear you need it." He handed Air Raid the hairbrush and sat in front of him. Air Raid tried to be gentle, but Silverbolt's hair tangled easily –and badly.

"Are you going to stop him from seeing them?" Air Raid asked as soon as the bedroom door closed.

"I'm considering all options," Silverbolt said. "I've already heard Slingshot's opinion."

"They're not going to do anything unless they know he's okay with it, I don't think," Air Raid said, pushing the first detangled section over Silverbolt's shoulder. "He didn't actually plug in them."

"He didn't?"

"Nope. They wanted to, but apparently Skywarp has a really big penis. And they dropped it. Why does that make you feel better?" Air Raid asked when Silverbolt let out the breath he hadn't realized he had held.

Silverbolt was seized with the sudden urge to confess to Air Raid how off this whole situation made him feel. He didn't, not wanting to upset Air Raid, not knowing what _would_ upset Air Raid, and hating that he didn't know. He silently cursed Megatron, all Seekers, Megatron again, Thundercracker and Skywarp specifically, and threw in Superion for good measure. "It could have been a trap," he said, reclaiming the hairbrush and pulling his hair back.

"But it's not. You're not going to make them go away?" Air Raid asked. "Fireflight hasn't been this happy in, like, a year."

Silverbolt didn't need the gestalt to hear the questions unspoken, (_are you still on our side? Are you going to tell Prime? Do you still understand?_) or to know that Air Raid didn't even know he was asking them. "Of course not," he said. "As long as they're not hurting him, all I can do is sit here and worry."

Air Raid refused to be pacified so easily. "But you don't like it."

"I don't have to like it," Silverbolt pointed out, patience stretched thin. "I don't have to approve, I don't have to think it's a good idea, I can sit here and plan his funeral, and it doesn't matter because stopping it is not the Autobot _way!"_ He realized he was yelling. He didn't care. Yelling had about as much affect on Air Raid as gravity.

"Don't you want him to be happy?" Air Raid asked. _Don't you want us to be happy?_

Everything was moving too fast and Silverbolt could barely keep up. He was exhausted, waiting for the other missile to fall, and at every turn the Seekers were going out of their way to _befriend_ the Aerialbots. Primus, at this point he probably trusted the Seekers more than half the Autobots.

It was a stupid question. Of course he wanted Fireflight to be happy, just as much as he wanted Slingshot to be happy. "I have to get going," he said. "My increasingly eerie-ass day cannot hold still for questions you know the answer to."

"It's not even ten o'clock."

"At this rate, we'll be eating dinner with Starscream as he tells us that we're human because the Utroms thought it would be funny."

"The who?" Air Raid asked, but Silverbolt was already out the door.

* * *

When Fireflight woke, some three hours later by the sun on the wall, Slingshot was watching him sleep. "Good morning?"

"You're on my arm," Slingshot said.

"Oh. Sorry." Fireflight scooted back towards the wall, off Slingshot. Slingshot didn't get out of Silverbolt's bed, though. He just kept looking at Fireflight.

"I'm sorry," he said finally.

Fireflight pulled him close, and Slingshot tucked his head under Fireflight's chin. "It's okay," Fireflight said, giving absolution as easy as a kiss. "I'm sorry I stayed out all night."

"Did you have fun?"

"Huh?"

"Did you have fun?" Slingshot repeated.

"Lots." Fireflight smiled, though Slingshot couldn't see it. "Thundercracker reminds me of you."

"Really?" Slingshot perked up at that.

"Yes, really," Fireflight said. "Will you help me wash my hair?"

* * *

"I was thinking," Skywarp said that afternoon as soon as Thundercracker was in the car.

"Take two Tylenol and lie down until it stops hurting."

Skywarp didn't look as he pulled out of the parking lot. He'd been a Decepticon too long to avoid car accidents. "You need to stop talking about Starscream."

"I talk about Starscream?" Thundercracker rolled down the window to tap the ash from his cigarette out.

"It took you this long to realize that's your mating call?"

"It took you this long to realize that's a bad idea with an Autobot?"

"No-one hired me to be smart," Skywarp pointed out, "and all the Aerialbots idolize him"

"Didn't stop you from bringing up that time on Planet Snake," Thundercracker countered.

"You need to stop talking about Starscream to Fireflight."

"Why? I have Pitspawn for a brother, he has at least one Pitspawn of a brother." Thundercracker grinned at him. "Are you feeling left out?"

"No," Skywarp said, turning on red. "But Fireflight looks like he's going to take his boobs and go home whenever you start on one of your "why I should be nominated to be shot" Starscream-themed rants. So knock it off."

"Wasn't he telling you about some guy telling his brothers to hit each other?"

"That's different," Skywarp waved it off. "He doesn't think he has bad brothers. If you don't shut up, he's going to think that you're a bad brother. And he probably won't like you anymore."

"He's not going to think I'm a bad brother." Thundercracker stabbed the radio on. "I'm not a bad brother."

"By Autobot standards you are. He's an Autobot. Play nice, so we can play with boobs." Skywarp paused. "You did like the boobs, right?"

"Yes, I liked the boobs," Thundercracker snapped. "I am not a bad brother by _anyone's_ standards."

"If Skyfire had been half the glitch you are to Starscream, you'd kill him. Didn't you say you were going to do that?" Skywarp rolled to a stop. The lights were against him today.

"I don't have to listen to this." Thundercracker opened the door and got out of the car in the middle of the road. He flipped off the guy that honked at him and headed off in the direction of their apartment.

"Guess he's walking home," Skywarp said to the empty car. Then he changed the station and drove to where boobs were hopefully waiting for him and, more importantly, attached to a guy that hung on his every word. Nobody but his trinemates had cared about him for eons, or so it felt, and Fireflight had been running through his mind all day. He had plenty of other stories to tell the Aerialbot, and he had a feeling that stories were the key to keeping this one around.

Thundercracker would be cooled off by the time he made it back, Skywarp estimated. It wasn't like the whole brother thing was a big deal; the way the two of them acted wasn't half as bad as the stories they told as long as Skywarp had known them. It was a minor detail that would simply upset someone as innocent as Fireflight. What the Aerialbot didn't know wouldn't hurt Skywarp.

When Skywarp knocked on the door to the Aerialbot's apartment, Fireflight answered. "Skywarp!" he said, sounding more excited to see the Seeker than anyone else in a very long time. Fireflight hugged him, or tried to, and hit him upside the head with his cast. "Oh no! Are you okay?" Fireflight dragged Skywarp in and pushed him on a stool. "I'm so sorry! Did I hurt you? I'm sorry!"

"No." Skywarp blinked a couple of times. He was lying; it _did_ hurt. "Yes. Kiss it all better?" He offered his head to Fireflight.

"What?" Fireflight asked, tilting his own head in confusion. "Kiss it?"

"It's a human thing." Skywarp pulled Fireflight in between his knees. "Are your brothers around?"

"No," Fireflight said, coyly –coyly! leaning his head against Skywarp's shoulder. "They left me here alone."

"Really, now," Skywarp said, sliding off the stool. "And they want you to wait for them for how long?"

Fireflight started walking backwards, towards the couch, without letting go of Skywarp's neck. "Until Silverbolt comes home at six."

"That's three hours away," Skywarp said. The couch wasn't far, and he fell on it, Fireflight next to him.

"Time enough for a story?" Fireflight asked. He ended up on Skywarp's lap, making it look careless. Maybe it was careless. Skywarp slung an arm over Fireflight's shoulder, his hand barely brushing a breast. Fireflight leaned farther back, silently allowing what was wordlessly asked.

"More than time enough," Skywarp grinned.

"Then tell me all about Vos."

Skywarp wasn't prepared for the relentless interrogation that followed for the next hour and a half, until Thundercracker came looking for them, hot, sweaty, tired and cranky. And between Fireflight inviting him to use the shower and Skywarp's idea with the ice cubes, there wasn't much time for talking about Vos.

At least they had the decency to look ashamed when Silverbolt walked in the door. Well, two of them. Skywarp just looked annoyed. Silverbolt calmly counted to ten, calmly resisted the urge to throw all three of them out the window for the second time in two days, and very, very calmly, said, "I don't know about Decepticons, but Autobots have private quarters for a reason."

"So do Decepticons," Starscream said behind him. He pushed past the startled Air Commander and set two paper bags of Chinese food on the counter. "Skywarp, however, has never quite grasped the concept fully."

"S'pose you're gonna make me stop," Skywarp sulked.

"The adults need to talk, so technically your presence is not required. However, I'm sure our gracious hosts would appreciate you in pants."  
That was possibly the longest speech Silverbolt had heard from Starscream without sarcasm, boasting, death threats, or all three. "What are you doing here?" he asked, finding his voice.

"Obviously, you've never read a mission report from either of them," Starscream said, as if that explained everything.

"Did you get General Tso's chicken for me?" Skywarp asked.

"Go _away,_ Skywarp."

"No," Silverbolt said, wondering exactly when he had crossed into Bizzaro World. Nine months ago or so, he guessed. "I haven't read their mission reports. Why would I have access to them?" Behind him, the last three Aerialbots came in and bee-lined for the television.

"If you sent those two out to locate a diamond in Peru, Thundercracker wouldn't bring it back, Skywarp would bring back a dead monkey, and neither of them would bother to inform anyone about the Protectbots crawling all over the place."

"So if I want to know what happened, I have to ask you," Silverbolt finished. "But, forgive me for saying so, you don't have the greatest reputation for honesty."

"Are you going to shoot me if you don't like the truth?" Starscream asked.

"Of course not!"

"Then I'm not going to lie to you."

"You could be lying now," Silverbolt felt obliged to point out, even if he did feel rather stupid doing so.

"You're just going to have to trust me," Starscream smirked. "Try the Kung Pao pork, you'll like it. And don't turn around."

Silverbolt, of course, turned around. "Air Raid, why-" he stopped midsentence. He didn't want to know. "Pull your pants up and put away the ruler."

"If you're done doubting me," Starscream said, "perhaps you would like an explanation over dinner?"


	7. 7

Title: I Think It's Going to Rain Today 7/Epic.  
Author: akisawana  
Genre: Drama/Family, with guest appearances by Romance, Angst, Crack, and Oh God, Didn't I Swear I'd Never Do This?  
Disclaimer: I am not making any money off of this, much to my mother's chagrin.  
Warnings: I make stuff up.  
Summary: THE CHAPTER OF EXPOSITION.  
Notes: Canon nazis, if you will kindly form an orderly queue at the yellow line, you will each be given three bullets to place in my skull with extreme prejudice.

* * *

Starscream claimed the computer chair, and the Aerialbots the couch, leaving the floor for Skywarp and Thundercracker. As Starscream promised, Silverbolt liked the Kung Pao pork; he wondered if Starscream was making a comment on his masochistic tendencies. "I'm curious," Silverbolt said, once his eyes stopped watering, "After all we've seen –and heard- Megatron do, what was so terrible you left?"

"First," Starscream said, "what do you know about the Quintessons?"

"They enslaved Cybertron at one point," Skydive said.

"Yes," Starscream said. "And since the Decepticons –with some help from the Autobots, overthrew them at the dawn of time, they've been plotting to take us back. Shockwave found an artifact they had left on some moon somewhere, and sent it to Megatron. I _told_ him it wasn't a weapon, but of _course_ he didn't listen."

"The attack on North Korea?" Silverbolt asked. It had been during that battle the horrible transformation had occurred. It was obvious to anyone with half a brain that Megatron hadn't expected his Doomsday Device of the Week to have such a unilaterally terrible effect, and the story so far made sense. Or, rather, it was too ridiculous to make up.

"North Korea has had a treaty with Megatron for decades," Starscream said, "based mainly on the fact that they are both insane dictators."

"So why did you attack it?"

"It was staged to draw the maximum number of Autobots." It worked, too. Prime had brought every Autobot to North Korea; everyone was cleared for active duty, for once, thanks to…

"And that's why the Decepticons were so quiet for two months before." Skydive said.

"Precisely," Starscream smirked. "But Megatron had no idea what the weapon did until he fired it, _despite_ having two months to study it."

"So you left because of a stunning display of idiocy?" Slingshot asked.

"Hatchling, that's not even on the top ten list of stupid things Megatron's done. Or the top thousand. No, it's what happened afterwards."

"Why did the Quintessons build a machine that turns us humans?" Fireflight interrupted, or possibly thought out loud. With him, it wasn't always easy to tell.

Either way, it caught Starscream off-guard. "It's the Quintessons. Who knows why they do anything? We left because of chocolate."

"Chocolate?"

"How did you get chocolate in North Korea?"

"How did you leave North Korea? We had to call the President!"

"Can we go back to the Quintessons?"

"If you would _shut up_ and let me _finish_, I shall _explain_," Starscream snapped. Silverbolt gave him Death Look Thirty-Five, the one he normally used on Autobots who confused age with rank. Surprisingly, Starscream had the grace to look ashamed for half a second. (Or so Fireflight said later. Silverbolt himself missed it.) "We were with Megatron when he moved to China. That's when Skywarp found chocolate. Show them, Skywarp."

"Show them what?" Skywarp half-muttered, all but falling into Thundercracker's lap.

"Take it _off_, Skywarp," Starscream ordered. "Megatron found it…inappropriate to enjoy any fleshling pleasure, no matter how small," he continued as Skywarp shucked off his shirt.

Silverbolt had seen the quarter-sized raised scar on Skywarp's chest at least four times by now, but he had always assumed it was similar to all of the Aerialbot's scars, that Skywarp had forgotten how fragile humans were and done something stupid. But it was set so close to the heart, and between Starscream's story, Skywarp's own barely-veiled reaction and the way Thundercracker's knuckles had turned white around Skywarp's hands…Silverbolt could fill in the blanks himself.

Slingshot couldn't. "What happened?" he asked as Fireflight nudged Silverbolt. Silverbolt nodded, and Fireflight slid off the couch to wrap Skywarp up in a hug.

Skywarp clutched at him, eyes firmly fixed on his dinner, and Thundercracker was whispering something in his wingmate's ear that sounded suspiciously like, "ride it out, 'Warp, it's not really happening."

"Megatron shot him." Starscream said flatly, ignoring the miniature drama at his feet. "Then refused to let anyone help him. We were in the middle of nowhere; the only thing resembling a medic was some old femme. He nearly died."

"And Megatron told you not to come back?" Skydive asked.

Starscream snorted. "He _shot_ Skywarp. We're not going back."

"But he shoots you all the time," Air Raid pointed out.

It wasn't Air Raid that Starscream was looking at when he answered, but Silverbolt. "I'm not Skywarp."

Silverbolt nodded in silent understanding. No Autobot had ever shot him, of course, but the principle was the same; they were responsible for their wingmates. And if desertion was what it took to keep a wingmate safe, well, that wasn't even a choice.

There was an awkward silence after Starscream's pronouncement; after a few minutes Skydive started collecting the dishes. Slingshot moved to the kitchen to wrap up the leftovers, and Air Raid joined the three on the floor. Skywarp clearly wasn't even in orbit around okay, and Silverbolt refrained from asking how he was holding up. It was difficult, more difficult than he would have thought a year ago.

Instead, he turned toward Starscream. "What are you planning to do next?" he asked. "I'm sure Prime would be glad to have you." That wasn't a complete lie; Silverbolt was sure Optimus, once he heard the whole story, wouldn't turn them away. Probably.

"I don't need _Prime's_ help to reverse this," Starscream sneered, and Silverbolt remembered too late that the jet had been a scientist once.

"That's not what I meant," he said hastily, "but there's just the three of you Seekers, and I'm sure Prime would appreciate your position and…why are you smirking?"

"There's more than three Seekers."

"The six of you, then," Silverbolt said, "though there might be a problem telling Powerglide and Thrust apart."

"Coneheads are not Seekers!" Thundercracker growled from the floor. Silverbolt hadn't been aware he had been paying any attention to anything but his wingmate.

"Most of the Seekers are holding Cybertron for Megatron," Starscream said, "We don't _need_ Autobot charity. Megatron couldn't take Vos from us without abandoning the Earth front and his vendetta with Prime. We'll rebuild it and start Seeking again."

"Seeking?" Skydive asked, wandering over with Slingshot in tow, both of them bearing drinks.

Starscream huffed and rolled his eyes. "Do you know nothing of your own history?"

"You kept us a little busy for lessons," Silverbolt said wryly.

"You may have noticed a bit of an energon shortage," Starscream said. "Seekers are supposed to be solving that problem, by finding uninhabited solar systems to harvest energon from."

"Is that what you and Skyfire were doing on Earth?" Skydive asked.

"All Seekers became Decepticons?" Slingshot demanded, before his brother finished speaking.

Starscream ignored the first question. "There _was_ a time Megatron had a point about Autobots," he said. "The war caused the energon crisis, not the other way around."

"That was Nova Prime," Skywarp put in, and it took Silverbolt half a minute to figure out where he was coming from. "Two Primes ago."

"Nobody ever said anything about him," Slingshot said. "Just Sentinel. Ironhide tells me all the time I'm a disgrace to his memory," he added at everyone's surprised looks.

"You pay attention to Ironhide?" Air Raid asked. Silverbolt had been thinking the same thing; then again, that revelation fit nicely in today's pattern of It Gets Weirder. For Primus's sake, he was drinking beer with Starscream, and no-one had tried to kill anyone yet!

"Didn't you start with the defecting-thing when Megatron killed Sentinel?" Skywarp asked Thundercracker.

Thundercracker dodged the question. "Isn't the game on tonight?"

"What was so bad about Nova?" Skydive wondered.

"You can kill a Prime?" Air Raid wondered in a completely different direction.

"Are we playing that question game?" Fireflight asked.

"What question game?" Starscream wanted to know.

"What sins did I commit in a past life?" Silverbolt asked Primus.

"Nothing too bad," Starscream said, "or you'd be the one stuck with Skywarp."

"At least I don't fill my gas tank and talk on the phone at the same time!"

Later, Silverbolt would identify that as the exact moment he stopped thinking of Starscream as an enemy.

Thundercracker and Skywarp decided they wanted to watch the game on their TV, possibly because it was in a different room than Starscream, and took half the Aerialbots with them. Skydive cornered Starscream into a crash course on Cybertron history. Silverbolt grabbed a bottle of tile cleaner and the phone, then headed off to the bathroom. If his brothers thought he was cleaning, they'd leave him alone.

Hot Spot answered the phone on the first ring. "You will not believe what happened," he said. "I'm going to kill him. No, I'm going to make him explain himself to Prime, and then I'm going to kill him. No, I'm going to make him explain himself to Prime and our creators, and _then _I'm going to kill him."

"Blades or First Aid?"

"No, _Groove _was the one calling me from the police station this time."

"Groove? What happened to him?" Silverbolt could not fathom a reason Groove would be calling Hot Spot from a police station, at least not one that would make Hot Spot this nail-spittingly angry. "Is he okay?"

"He's not going to be when I'm done with him. Did I mention he got arrested?"

"Actually, no."

"Now I get to call Prime and ask for bail money. And probably a lawyer. And if he gets a fine, the money for _that,_ too. I can't _wait_ for that conversation."

"Make him do it," Silverbolt suggested.

"He used his phone call to call me. How am I supposed to explain this to Wheeljack? He's busy, but he'll drop what he's doing, he always does; he'll probably want to come out -hold on." Silverbolt heard Hot Spot put the phone down, heard muffled voices, heard Hot Spot yelling, heard a door close. "He's not even _sorry_." Hot Spot sighed. "I can't deal with this right now. My own brother, arrested. And this whole time, I've been telling him to stay out of trouble, asking if he was okay, asking him what was going on, and he was _lying_ to me!"

Once Hot Spot got to the "and he was _lying _to me!" part, Silverbolt knew Hot Spot wasn't going to listen to anything he said for the next ten minutes or so. The Protectbots were better at hiding things from their leader than the Aerialbots were, which made their lies less cheeky and fun. Silverbolt sprayed some cleaner in the sink, not that it actually needed it, to preserve his cover.

Finally, Hot Spot wound down. "Indulge my schadenfreude?" he asked.

"Well, none of mine have been arrested yet."

"Please, Silverbolt?" Hot Spot all but begged, and guilt hit Silverbolt like hailstones. "Tell me I'm not the only one…"

"Fireflight has a new boyfriend," Silverbolt interrupted before Hot Spot could finish his sentence with something terribly true about their brothers.

"Powerglide-type or Sandstorm-type?" Hot Spot knew, if not all the details, more than most.

"Definitely not Powerglide-type, or I'd be saying, "Air Raid and Slingshot got arrested for murder." Not really Sandstorm-type either, seeing as this guy lives across the hall instead of across the galaxy, doesn't have a track record as long as my arm, and isn't about to accidently shoot him when he onlines in the morning."

"You make him sound almost acceptable," Hot Spot said. "Where's the schadenfreude?"

"Isn't anticipation half the fun?" Silverbolt asked. Hot Spot took genuine delight in hearing about Silverbolt's troubles, enough that Silverbolt could play the martyr all he wanted. He wondered if that was Vector Sigma's doing, sick sense of humor that thing had, or if Wheeljack had a well-intentioned hand in it. "It's a new boyfriend. He's spent one night away from home, and even then he was right across the hall. Slingshot decided the appropriate course of action was to stay up and drink all night, then call Fireflight every name in the book. And we haven't even gotten to the "how much Fireflight-time are we giving up" part yet."

"Ouch. Fireflight okay?"

"Oh, yeah." Silverbolt said. "Do you remember when Sideswipe and Air Raid beat Cliffjumper half to death?"

"You're…going to have to be more specific. First Aid saw the Twins' handiwork on Cliffjumper multiple times."

"This wasn't the Twins. This was Sideswipe helping Air Raid maximize the grievous bodily harm to Cliffjumper while minimizing repercussions from the brass."

"Not ringing a bell. Are you going somewhere with this?"

"I am. It was the time they left him outside the medbay with his mouth duct-taped shut?"

"Oh, First Aid told us about that. We were in Peru."

"Well, after what Cliffjumper said to deserve that, I got the feeling nothing anyone says will really bother Fireflight anymore."

"Really?"

"When it's from his brother? No. Especially when Slingshot tags it with "I don't mean to hurt you, I'm just trying to make you understand." I hate it when he says that."

"Where did he pick that one up?"

"…Long story." It was actually a short story, but Hot Spot's schadenfreude was limited to whatever the other Aerialbots were inflicting on Silverbolt. He went for the diversion instead. "You should call Ratchet."

"Ratchet? Why?"

"Because he's as much your creator as Wheeljack, he's exactly as busy as Wheeljack, and unlike Wheeljack, Prime is afraid of him."

"Good points, all good points." Hot Spot sighed. "I should call him before it gets too late."

"Okay." Silverbolt hesitated, then added, "Keep me posted?"

"I won't tell him," Hot Spot said.

"Tell who what?"

"I won't tell Ratchet that you're keeping secrets."

Silverbolt winced. "I don't want to take you down with me."

"How bad is it?"

"I've got a handle on it."

"And you don't want to take me down with you."

"If anyone finds out, we're going to be the first Autobots to be dishonorably discharged. With extreme prejudice." _Maybe Starscream will take us._

"You're playing with fire again, aren't you?" Hot Spot said. "You're just as bad as your brothers."

"Yep," Silverbolt admitted. "But it's nothing illegal and nobody's getting hurt."

"It can't be that bad, then!" Hot Spot sighed. "I don't have time to play games with you. I have to call Ratchet before it gets too late over there."He hung up.

Silverbolt pretended it didn't hurt, told himself that Hot Spot had asked in the first place, and started cleaning the bathroom in earnest.

* * *

They hadn't even closed the door to the Seeker's apartment before Thundercracker had a lit cigarette in Skywarp's mouth. "Inhale, 'Warp," he ordered his wingmate roughly, even as he pressed Skywarp's hands gently into Fireflight's.

"Are you okay, dude?" Air Raid asked. Slingshot smacked him on the back of the head. "I mean," Air Raid continued, ignoring his brother, "I've shot you plenty of times, and so has, um, everyone else. But you're a total wreck. This isn't normal. At all. You get shot all the time."

"Has Prime ever shot you?" Skywarp asked.

"Yes," Slingshot said from the kitchen. "Plenty of times. Well, shot at us, anyways. Did you ever notice the Autobots went to the Imperial Stormtrooper Academy of Marksmanship? I'm good, but I'm not _that _good." Chips and salsa located, he dragged his wingmate over to the couch.

"Since when did Autobots shoot each other?" Thundercracker asked slowly.

"Since forever. You guys don't do paintball?"

"It had to have been after they came to Earth, because the Wreckers hadn't heard of it either," Fireflight put in.

"Right. Paintball." _Primus, how does Silverbolt keep from going mad_? Thundercracker dragged his hand down his face. "Anyways. We need to talk to Fireflight. _Privately._" Air Raid opened his mouth to object, but Thundercracker added, "Like he's not going to tell you everything later."

Slingshot whispered something in Air Raid's ear. Then he asked the Seekers, "Do you want us to keep you updated on the score?"

"Just leave us some salsa," Skywarp said, leading Fireflight off. Slingshot turned the game up, just loud enough that they wouldn't be able to hear anything in the bedroom. Thundercracker gave the two of them one last look before following Skywarp and Fireflight, and locking the door behind him.

Skywarp was flopped across the bed, head in Fireflight's lap. Fireflight was stroking his hair gently, not saying anything. Thundercracker sat down between the two of them and the door. "Done freaking out?" he asked his wingmate.

"If I say yes, do I have to get up?" Skywarp asked.

Thundercracker waited for Fireflight to ask what was going on, but he just kept petting Skywarp. Something seemed vaguely familiar about the whole scene. Fireflight paused and bent to kiss Skywarp; they had been doing the exact same thing this morning, only the positions had been reversed. Oh, and neither of them had been coming back from the verge of utter terror. "Do you want to tell him, or do you want me to?"

"Depends. How many times are you planning on calling me a whore?"

Thundercracker refused to rise to the bait. "I was going to tell him the version you told Starscream the second time."

"The second time when I was overcharged off my aft and didn't remember the next morning that I told him or the second time he caught me and was just being a twat about making me squirm?"

"The one that doesn't involve a four-hour illustrated lecture on the Decepticon Cause as background."

Fireflight let them bicker and draw it out. They'd tell him everything eventually if he stayed quiet and patient, in their own time.

"If you tell him, do I actually have to be here?" Skywarp asked.

"Yes."

"Fine." He looked up at Fireflight. "I was 'facing with Megatron. Are we done now?"

"No. Lie back and think of chocolate." Thundercracker pushed him back into Fireflight's lap and then sat on his legs for good measure. "If we let him up, he's liable to do something stupid and cover-blowing. Besides," he added, "the more he bitches, the more he gets fussed over. He likes that, if you somehow missed it with your magical mountain-missing sensors."

"I am not making slag up for Autobot pity!"

"I didn't say you were."

"Well, he knows now. Can I go now?"

"He doesn't know. Shut up and let him do his Autobot thing." Fireflight took the hint and started petting Skywarp again.

"If you're going to tell him, at least tell him about the recharging," Skywarp sulked.

"Do you want to tell it?"

"Can I beat around the bush some more?"

"I think the bush is pretty much dead at this point." Thundercracker sighed. "Megatron only shoots assassins."

"And Starscream," Skywarp said, stubbing out his cigarette. Thundercracker lit him a new one, leaving his hand on Skywarp's face almost too long for Decepticon pride.

"And Starscream," Thundercracker affirmed. "Most people are a little more circumspect than Starscream, though. Still, people have been trying to kill him since long before there were Decepticons."

"Kaon was like that, though."

"For someone who doesn't want to tell the story, you're doing a whole lot of talking," Thundercracker pointed out. "Kaon was –is- a city-state on Cybertron. Its _nice_ nickname is the Heel of Primus."

"Or Cyber-Detroit. I like Cyber-Detroit."

"They will shoot you in Kaon for being green."

Fireflight waited patiently, and silently, for them to make their point.

"So Megatron is not one to trust easily," Thundercracker continued. "Even so, there've been sleeper agents that spent vorns gaining his trust just to get a chance to kill him."

"When we started out, we could barely afford energon, let alone furniture," Skywarp said. "We'd just all recharge on the floor together."

"By the time I joined, there was furniture," Thundercracker said dryly. "I joined late, late enough that Megatron had gotten a bit paranoid. He had a room with a lock."

"I had the code," Skywarp put in, attention suddenly riveted on an invisible crack in the ceiling. "I always have the code."

"There were other … precautions. Skywarp was trusted enough by Megatron to be exempt from them all." Thundercracker caught Fireflight's gaze, held it, and repeated, "All of them."

"Whoa, that wasn't creepy at all," Skywarp babbled beneath them. "Can you never channel Screamer again? Please?"

"Why would you want to go in Megatron's room?" Fireflight asked.

Skywarp jerked up and away from him, but Thundercracker was sitting on his legs still, and Skywarp ended up bent double in Thundercracker's lap. "Told you," he said, mostly to Thundercracker's knee. "I was 'facing him. You didn't think he kept me around because I'm so clever, did you?"

Thundercracker pushed Skywarp into a more comfortable (if no less clingy) position. Fireflight's hands hovered over Skywarp's back until Thundercracker took his wrists and set him to rubbing Skywarp's shoulders. "You're wonderful in the air," Fireflight murmured. "That's what we thought."

"I don't know how much about Decepticon politics you know," Thundercracker said, "but Skywarp was the only Decepticon on earth who was actually, personally, loyal to Megatron. Everyone else was afraid of his fusion cannon, waiting to take over, or Starscream. The last we heard from Cybertron, it's split evenly between Seekers and Shockwave's troops. At this point, Megatron only leads because Shockwave and Starscream can't afford a civil war with the Autobots –you- around."

"He threw an exception when he found out," Skywarp said. "Mostly because Starscream didn't lose any of his Seekers."

"Whatever else you can say about Megatron, we all thought he was very good to Skywarp," Thundercracker continued, waiting for Fireflight to catch on. "Nobody expected him to ever raise his hand to Skywarp, much less try to kill him."

"'Cause I'm his whore," Skywarp mumbled, and Fireflight's hands stopped moving. "Used to whore me out when he needed something. He promised it would be the last time every time. And it never was."

"Oh, _Skywarp,_" Fireflight whispered, hands sliding down to wrap around Skywarp's waist and hug him tightly.

"He was supposed to make it _stop_." Skywarp pulled against Fireflight's arms, but Fireflight didn't let him go. "But that was supposed to be my Contribution to the Cause, servicing some senators or Seekers or whatever."

Thundercracker grimaced at the contradiction; no matter how many times he heard it, it still made him want to remove Megatron's interface leads. Or head. "Most of the Decepticons don't know," he said. "Starscream, me, Megatron. Soundwave and the Constructicons. The rest just assumed that Megatron didn't trust anyone else to not kill him in the middle of an interface."

"Don't know what?" Fireflight asked. "That you didn't want to spend the night with him?"

"Shiny Cybertron, you _are _retarded," Skywarp snapped, shrugging off Fireflight's arms and trying to push Thundercracker off his legs. Thundercracker didn't move, and Skywarp called him several choice names before punching him. "I hate you both," he spat, cigarette landing on the bed. Fireflight absentmindedly picked it up, not noticing it was still lit until it burned his finger. Skywarp slumped against Thundercracker again, hiding his face. "Lemme alone."

"I'm sorry," Fireflight said for the second time that day. He rested his hands on Skywarp's shoulders again, and when the Seeker didn't react, resumed massaging them. "I am an idiot, really, but I promise if you tell me what I got wrong…" Fireflight trailed off, not wanting to upset Skywarp any further. If that was even possible. Skywarp was shaking.

"I lo-I thought I- He…" Skywarp stammered, and sniffed loudly. "I was just his prostitute," he said finally.

"What's a prostitute?" Fireflight asked.

"How have you never heard that word before?" Skywarp asked, tiredly. Fireflight shrugged.

"Nobody wants to tell me what it means."

The Seekers looked at each other. "A prostitute is someone who lets other people interface with them in exchange for money," Thundercracker said slowly. "Or favors."

"I funded the damn revolution on my back," Skywarp muttered. He was definitely crying now.

"He made you interface with people for money?" Fireflight's hands stopped moving in shock.

"Well, sometimes it was for favors."

At a loss for words, Fireflight threw his arms around Skywarp and held him tightly. "Skywarp…oh Skywarp," he said, helplessly, feeling his own eyes beginning to fill. With a little guidance from Thundercracker, the three of them laid down on the bed (one of Thundercracker's legs still thrown over Skywarp to keep him from bolting.) Fireflight let his tears fall on Skywarp's neck unashamedly, letting them say what he didn't have the words for.

Skywarp twisted around to wipe at Fireflight's cheeks. "Don't cry, sparkles. It wasn't a big deal." Thundercracker snorted behind him, but didn't say anything. "I wanted to do it…I guess I just thought that he'd stop thinking of me like that. I'm an idiot."

Fireflight couldn't even process that. Skywarp shifted uncomfortably. "So if I wake you up in the middle of the night on accident, that's why," he said. "Thought you had a right to know if I accidentally smacked you."

"I think you crashed his logic circuits," Thundercracker chuckled. Fireflight had heard enough gallows humor to recognize it.

"Fix it for me? I'm tired." Skywarp nuzzled Fireflight's chest. Fireflight stroked his hair, glad that he could help Skywarp.

Thundercracker didn't say anything until Skywarp's breathing evened out, Skywarp either asleep or pretending to be. Thundercracker sighed, and said, "He has a bit of a skewed view on the situation."

"You're not s'posed to interface unless you really want to," Fireflight said. "Otherwise, everyone gets mad at you."

"'Warp was…being a prostitute before he met Megatron," Thundercracker said. "He flunked out of flight school, and he couldn't get a job anywhere else. He needed some way to earn energon." Fireflight nodded, stories made so much more sense when they started at the beginning. "Skywarp doesn't like to talk about it, and I've never asked Megatron, but from what I've heard, he was Megatron's first recruit. He told Skywarp all sorts of _lies_-" Thundercracker spit it out like a dirty word, "that he loved Skywarp and wanted a better life for him. That the Decepticons would make it so nobody would have to do that again. And the whole time, he was pimping out Skywarp so the rest of them could sit around and plan the glorious revolution. Megatron told him it was for the greater good."

Fireflight tightened his grip on Skywarp. "He believed him?"

"Yes," Thundercracker hissed, and Fireflight could feel the rage pouring off him. "Skywarp believed him when Megatron said that he loved him, when Megatron said that he _respected _him, and until Megatron stuck him in our trine to spy on Starscream, he'd send him out to _be fucked_ by whoever's favor he needed. And since Skywarp believed him, he'd go _happily_. Even after Skywarp was in our trine, Megatron was always calling him to his berth. Me and Starscream, we knew what he was doing, what Megatron was doing, but we couldn't very well tie him down and keep him from going, could we? He'd just warp out. Even after the time we showed him a tape of Megatron being honest about him, he just insisted that he knew Megatron loved him and was just making sure nobody thought he'd slept his way to the top."

"Which he did," Fireflight pointed out.

"He doesn't see it that way," Thundercracker said. "But he did. Primus, the slag Megatron put him through…his favorite hobby is torturing Skywarp, not Starscream. And I'm always the one picking up the pieces." Thundercracker sighed again. "We never thought Megatron would shoot him. Who breaks their favorite toy?"

* * *

I am going to finish this fic or die trying.


	8. 8: Interlude

Title: I Think It's Going to Rain Today Interlude Truckin'  
Author: akisawana  
Genre: Drama/Family, with guest appearances by Romance, Angst, Crack, and Oh God, Didn't I Swear I'd Never Do This?  
Disclaimer: I am not making any money off of this, much to my mother's chagrin.  
Warnings: I make stuff up.  
Summary: A brief interlude.  
Notes: What a long strange trip it's been.

* * *

_ Somewhere in China, six or seven or nine months ago, this happened. It is not happening to Skywarp now…_

Skywarp did not want to open his eyes. First off, optics should online, not manually open and shut. Second off, eyes were for humans, and he was not human, and his current state of…squishiness was a crime against nature and Primus himself.

Third off, as long as he was unconscious, he didn't have to think about Megatron.

He tried to will himself back into stasis –it should have been easy as falling off a cliff, but now it was _hard,_ and took effort, and his chest hurt too much for him to focus properly, kept distracting him with reminders of yelling and smelling bright iron and a feeling worse than any he'd known before, a systems malfunction that had no analogue to his true form, and all the more terrifying for it. He gave up, and opened his eyes, and tried to look for Thundercracker without moving too much.

The room was bright, so it was the daycycle, and Starscream was perched on a crate, frowning over a datapad.

"Where's TC?" Skywarp asked. It was the first time in longer than he cared to remember that he woke up in repairs without Thundercracker nearby. Not that this was proper repairs, since it was the dirt-floored shack of some old femme, and he wasn't just waiting for a parts replacement, but still. He was hurt and Thundercracker wasn't there.

"I kicked him out," Starscream said, putting down the datapad and walking away from Skywarp. "He was driving me crazy with his fretting." The Air Commander knelt in front of the room's small stone hearth, and did something that sounded like it involved a lot of water. "He'll be back soon."

"Oh."

Starscream stood up, and dusted his hands off on his pants. "Are you hungry?"

"I'm not…doing that _thing_." Eating was strange, alien, not something a proper Decepticon did. Proper Decepticons needed only liquid energon. Only hatchlings and mechs ready for the scrapheap couldn't control their mouths enough to keep from spilling and needed gel-solid goodies. Skywarp was neither.

"You're going to have to eat eventually," Starscream pointed out, coming over to sit by Skywarp.

"No, I won't."

"Yes, you will."

"No, I won't."

"Yes, you will."

"No, I won't."

"Yes. You will," Starscream sighed. If Skywarp had been paying more attention, he would have recognized it as #117, "I want to hurt you but not as much as I want to rub my endless patience with your childish shenanigans in the face of a third party."

"No. I won't and you can't make me."

"Not today," Starscream conceded, leaning over to wash his hands, "but you will." He moved to check on the bandages covering Skywarp's chest and Skywarp looked away. As bad as flesh was, it was worse when it started leaking red coppery-smelling…stuff, and if he never saw that again, it would be too soon. He didn't want to feel the monofilament –thread- that was holding together torn edges, didn't want to feel the crust covering them that occasionally cracked and leaked dampness, didn't want to feel the dull ache every time he even thought about moving. He hated being shot. He wanted Thundercracker. Thundercracker was always there when he was shot.

Thundercracker was also a hell of a lot more careful with the whole "let's clean out this hole in Skywarp's chest we're not actually fixing" deal. Starscream was quicker, though, more efficient. Skywarp kept his eyes fixed on the wallpaper and managed not to scream. He hissed through his teeth once, when Starscream pressed against something that did not want to be pressed, but Starscream had a light touch (when he wanted) and when he was done, Skywarp's chest didn't hurt anymore than it had before. Which was still like the time one of those twitchy-small drones had gotten caught in his cockpit and had shot its way out, except _this_ time the shooting didn't stop. "You hate me," he whined in Starscream's general direction.

Starscream had returned to the fire. "If I hated you, I would have left you to the tender mercies of Shockwave's rejects."

"You should have," Skywarp mumbled, not realizing Starscream could hear him.

"Sit up," Starscream ordered, his voice more acidic than usual. "You can manage _that_ at least?"

Skywarp could, indeed prop himself up against the wall. He probably could have gotten up and walked out to find Thundercracker, but there wasn't much point. He didn't have a way to find his wingmate, aside from wandering around in circles, and his wingmate was probably coming back, and then they'd sit around in this cruddy shack and wish for the good old days on planets covered in snakes.

Starscream handed him a teacup. "Drink." Skywarp knew better to question what he was putting in his mouth. He swallowed the bitter drink.

"You should have left me," he repeated. "At least they would have let me die quick, instead of keeping me alive for sadistic games with mystery liquids."

"It's a _painkiller_," Starscream said, his patience fraying.

"Then why are you still _here?"_

Starscream snatched the empty cup away from him. "Because someone has to keep your idiot aft in one piece!" A bowl of soup appeared in Skywarp's lap. It did not occur to Skywarp to be thankful that the bowl was not upside down.

"Why are you even bothering? What, by shiny Cybertron, do you want me _for_? I'm sure you have some grand crazy half-baked plan that's going to fall apart because you don't have the common sense of a _doorknob_, and I ain't doing any heavy lifting, so you should have just left me. You should have let me _die!_"

Starscream lunged for him, but instead of strangling him, he grabbed Skywarp's chin and forced him to look him in the eyes. "Don't ever _say_ that," he hissed through gritted teeth. "Don't even _think_ that. You are _not _allowed to die without _my permission_, soldier. Do I make myself _clear?"_

Skywarp, stunned and a little scared, swallowed and nodded. He hadn't expected _that_.

Starscream's hand slipped to Skywarp's shoulder, heavily. "I'll need you, when I lead the Decepticons. I'll need a second in command I can trust." Skywarp leaned forward, and Starscream's other hand was on his wingmate's elbow, and Skywarp's head dropped onto Starscream's shoulder of its own accord, and Starscream very carefully shifted without moving Skywarp to shield him from unpresent enemies. "I need you now."

Someone looking in, some human looking in, would think it nothing more than those rare hugs women pretend they don't know about, when one man's emotional shield's drop and another has to hold him together, which just goes to show that women project all sorts of romantic notions on men. A Decepticon warrior, a Seeker, would have seen in the half-embrace something far more nuanced and far more familiar. He would have seen trust pledged in a motion, loyalty in a touch, and an oath that would not be broken before death in the words unsaid. He would have seen Starscream swear to protect Skywarp from any and all, unto the Great Unmaker himself, to take care of Skywarp before Skywarp himself knew he was in want, to never sacrifice Skywarp on the altar of self-promotion. And this hypothetical Decepticon would have seen Skywarp promise Starscream, through half-ritulized, half-instinctual dance, promise to follow orders he didn't understand, to honor all requests to the best of his ability, in letter and in spirit, to trust Starscream to not ask more of Skywarp than Skywarp would willingly give.

And any Decepticon that had stumbled upon the scene would have been jealous to see this last remnant of an ancient warrior code, for while only the scholars remembered these bonds of honor and tradition, it was plain to any Cybertronian that this was not the normal between fellow warriors, between commander and soldier, but something special, something that belonged only to those two. Any Decepticon alive accidently stumbling on the scene would have been compelled to ruin it somehow, to belittle it.

Almost any Decepticon. Thundercracker felt no such urge; instead he stepped back out and let them have their moment. He'd lost any chance of such things for himself long ago, but that didn't mean he had to shatter the moment. No, moment-shattering was the provenance of Megatron these days, Megatron who didn't care about his warriors no matter how loyal, Megatron who didn't grant protection to his warriors so much as cause them to need it, Megatron who was so heartily offended by anyone disagreeing with him that to find joy in chocolate was to court death.

So Thundercracker let Starscream do what he was meant to do, and let Skywarp have his moment of peace, and waited until he heard them start to bicker again before going in the hut. "Hey, I found us a car. We need to go before Auntie comes back."

Skywarp looked suspiciously damp around the face, but he levered himself up with Starscream's shoulder. "You found a car? Lying on the side of the road? Are you sure it's not an Autobot?"

"Found it in the same bar I found Rumble and Frenzy, so can we go before they find us? Please?"

Starscream stopped dead, one of Skywarp's arms around his shoulders. "I don't think I've ever heard you say that before." He shook his head and half-carried Skywarp out the door. "Strange day."

What came next, the Seekers never talked about. There was camping, and hiding, and Skywarp thought he was going to die at least six times, and Starscream thought he was going to kill both of them at least twice that, and Thundercracker tried not to think much at all. It ended twelve weeks later, with Starscream on a library computer fixing their paperwork, and Thundercracker hustling pool, and Skywarp most emphatically not earning his keep. And everything between then and meeting the Aerialbots in Detroit was just boring.

_This is not happening to Skywarp right now, there is no hole in his chest and it is Fireflight, not Starscream holding him, and wherever Thundercracker is, he's not stealing a car to run away from home and family to safety, and Skywarp is not lying on that dirt floor, he's just stuck in a loop...  
_


	9. 9

Title: I Think It's Going to Rain Today 9/More than 9  
Author: akisawana  
Genre: Drama/Family, with guest appearances by Romance, Angst, Crack, and Oh God, Didn't I Swear I'd Never Do This?  
Disclaimer: I am not making any money off of this, much to my mother's chagrin.  
Warnings: Somehow this turned into a giant booze-soaked pile of non-explicit sex. I blame Thundercracker.  
Summary: They discover a new normal. (Luckily for Skywarp, it involves lots of boobs.) Then it gets thrown out the window.  
Notes: I know I have seen all of the third season of the original cartoon. I know this because as a result of Mr. Bear's neurosis there was no way I watched the Hate Plague without watching everything before it. _So why can't I remember Hot Spot?_

* * *

Seven-Eleven never called.

Kmart said they would call him after the interview, but never did.

Meijer would only hire Fireflight if he would work midnights but at least they offered him a job.

The manager of Jimmy John took one look at his cast and told him to reapply when it was off..

So when Best Buy called him, he didn't want to get Silverbolt's hopes up. He asked Skywarp to take him instead. Skywarp dressed him in a skirt and kissed him for luck. Fireflight drew the line at public nudity, mostly out of general principle and the size of Skywarp's backseat.

The interview ran late, and Fireflight came out of the back room looking a little dazed, even for him. "I have a job," he said once they were in the parking lot. "I signed the paperwork. I start Tuesday."

Skywarp whooped and hugged him. "We need to celebrate. Let's go get Thundercracker and dinner."

"Shouldn't I tell Silverbolt?"

"You don't start until Tuesday, I thought? Let's not wait."

"Well, yeah, but he's my brother." Fireflight kicked the tire of the car. "I suppose maybe he'll be too happy to be mad..."

"No, no, gordito" Skywarp interrupted. "If this is a brother-thing, do it. I don't know brother-things." He looked at Fireflight, and made a mental note to ask Thundercracker about brother-things later. Or Starscream, Starscream would actually probably be the wiser choice. "Would he be mad that we're working together?"

Fireflight got in the car, narrowly missing banging his head. "It's just...it's not your fault. I've given him reasons, or at least Slingshot reasons." He shrugged. "It's different, I have to leave them if I have a job."

Skywarp wasn't the brightest star in the sky, but eons with Thundercracker had taught him to judge Conversations Not To Have by tone of voice as much as by subject matter. "Well, then we'll go home and tell Silverbolt, then we'll go somewhere to celebrate. All seven of us. Do you want to show your brothers Mongolian Barbeque?"

Fireflight smiled at him. And that smile, and what that smile did to Skywarp, and what that smile did to Thundercracker together were half worth almost everything. "I think they'd like that," he said, taking Skywarp's hand.

"One thing before I forget," Skywarp said, halfway home, still holding Fireflight's hand. "Don't tell anyone at the store that we're an us. I sort-of told everyone that TC's my brother and you'd be his girlfriend." He flashed his teeth at Fireflight. "It's not _entirely _a lie. But if they knew we were an us, they wouldn't have hired you, it's against the rules." Skywarp didn't see the need to tell Fireflight that he'd only been hired because Skywarp had the hiring manager's wife's phone number and a picture of said manager, naked, with the head cashier on the breakroom couch. "Two things. Don't sit on the couch."

* * *

Slingshot's car was in the parking lot, so he had to be in the apartment somewhere. Skydive checked the kitchen, the shower, both closets, the laundry room, the stairwell and the laundry room one last time before he found Slingshot on the Seekers' living room floor, doing something with a car part and a screwdriver that Skydive probably didn't want the details of.

"I quit," he said, by way of greeting.

Skydive sat next to him. "I'm thinking about quitting school," he said. "I'd be able to pick up more hours then."

"They wouldn't let me prove I was sober. I was. You know I was. I don't drink that much."

They'd gone together for donuts that morning. Skydive hadn't been sure Slingshot's shirt was clean enough to wear, had thought it smelled a little like beer, but Slingshot had laughed it off. "Or, I should get financial aid next semester. I qualify, just missed the filing date last time around."

"They just wanted to get rid of me because I didn't kiss their collective ass for being so kind as to grant me such a slagging _wonderful_ job. With such _lovely_ customers. Shiny Cybertron, I'd rather deal with Coneheads than those people any day of the week."

"We could share a car. That would save three hundred dollars a month. Whatever we got for selling the other car should cover until next semester."

"What are you two doing on my floor?" Starscream asked, coming in the door with a bag from Skywarp's store.

"What do you care?" Slingshot said.

"It's my floor." Starscream took out a bottle of tequila and three shot glasses from above the fridge. "You're impeding my post-midterm celebration. Some of these students, I don't know how they're capable of breathing, much less human speech. Some of them aren't." He poured each of them a shot. "Are you joining me or what?"

The Aerialbots sat at the counter. Slingshot picked up one of the glasses. "Do you know what's going on?" he asked Skydive.

"We are getting drunk," Starscream said. "Because we are now one big happy family and that means I am socially obligated to help you dull the pain."

"What pain?" Skydive asked at the same time Slingshot said, "One big happy family?"

Starscream drank his shot, and then stared at the empty glass. Skydive guessed he was waiting for the liquid courage to kick in. "Without going into too much detail, yes. You come with Fireflight. I'm dragged along behind those two idiots. This is the recalibration." When they didn't say anything he refilled his glass and emptied it again. "Drink," he ordered.

They did, Slingshot because Starscream's logic might make sense after a few beers -or shots- and Skydive because he never turned down free alcohol. "Still, pain?" Skydive asked.

"Expanding the family always hurts," Starscream said.

"So your plan, basically, is to get us drunk until you're magically one of us?" Slingshot scowled. "I don't think it works like that."

"Not one of you, I'm not glitched enough for that," Starscream snapped, pouring another round. "Just friends, scrapheap."

And Skydive could tell he was being honest. It was easy to tell how honest Starscream was, especially as a human. The more nervous he seemed the less he was lying. It was a little pathetic, really, that the only way Starscream knew how to make friends was to announce it was happening and then get everyone drunk until it was no longer awkward. "If we're going to get falling-down drunk, how about the couch?" He got up and moved. What was the human phrase? Feet of clay.

Slingshot followed him. "It would be an honor to be the friend of the Mighty Starscream," he said, overcompensating on the sarcasm.

Starscream brought the bottle with him. "So why were you on my floor?" he asked after another round. When they didn't answer, he added, "We are friends now. This is happening. You ought to at least acknowledge that I asked you a question."

"It's a thing," Skydive said. Tequila was not his friend. "It's not a you-thing."

"So I can see you problem with an objective view?" It wasn't really a question.

"I don't have a job any more. Any advice on failure from the master?" Slingshot asked.

Starscream picked up his glass, made as if to throw it at Slingshot, then reconsidered and did another shot instead. "You hated that job anyways. Find another one that sucks less."

"'S not that easy," Slingshot sulked. "All the jobs suck and I hate them all. Everything sucks"

"Then find another line of work. Do something with that...is that a car part?" Starscream pointed at the car part laying forgotten on the floor. "You could repair those."

"Can't," Slingshot said. "They said I was too dumb."

"The paperwork," Skydive explained, "Optimus wouldn't let us cheat and the paperwork cheated."

Starscream considered this for a moment. "If I was you," he said. "I would drink until I didn't worry about it tomorrow."

"Because I'll be hungover," Slingshot pointed out.

"Hangovers can be usefully distracting when the situation is hopeless," Starscream said.

Skydive thought about what Starscream would consider a hopeless situation. He cursed his imagination and tossed back another shot. "You know what I don't miss? Living under a mountain."

"Better a mountain than four thousand mechanometers of water."

"That might actually be worse than being squishy," Slingshot said. "I mean. At least we can see the sky."

"Oh," Starscream said, "it is." He launched into a monologue about the many, many disadvantages of an underwater base housing a bunch of fliers, about the cold and the damp and the lack of privacy. He also kept refilling their glasses, so they didn't mind.

Skydive must have zoned out at some point, because when he blinked Slingshot was using his lap as a pillow and gently whacking him in the face with a water bottle. "Drink," he said, "or regret it tomorrow."

"You should be Seekers," Starscream said, drinking the last of the tequila straight from the bottle. "That's a job you can do. Primus. I am overcharged."

"We can't be Seekers. Seekers are Decepcons and we're Autorialbots." Skydive said around the water bottle. Nothing was coming out. He was too drunk to realize that was because the cap was still on.

"Besides," Slingshot said to Skydive's knee, "there's a war going on. We could die. You could die. We all could die."

"I can't die," Starscream said. "We tested the hypothesis. I am immune to death."

"Tested the hypothesis?" Skydive asked.

Starscream didn't hear him. "And you're not going to die. Because if I tell all the Seekers not to shoot you, and they won't, then that just leaves all the other Decepticons and they aren't going to kill you. You're all better than them."

"That's not hard though," Slingshot said. "If I can do it."

Starscream threw the screwdriver at him. "It is hard. You are," he struggled to find an English word, then visibly gave up. "I wouldn't be wasting my time on you if you weren't."

"I thought we were one big happy family because of the other them," Skydive said, enunciating very carefully.

Starscream shrugged. "I wouldn't let them waste their time on you if you weren't worth it. You're not as good as us. But you have potential. You would," He stole Skydive's water bottle, opened it, and drank it all.

"We would what?" Slingshot asked, when Starscream didn't finish his sentence.

"You would be good Seekers. Everyone else will be doing it because we're going to need a lot. You five, you would be good." He nodded. "Yeah. I'll make you Seekers. It's not difficult. I just tell everyone "these five outstanding young mechs here, they're Seekers now." And then they all ignore me but at least they'll know you're Seekers. I'll do it right now. Technically there's no reason you can't be Seekers and Autodorks at the same time. Yeah. You're all officially Seekers now. I have five new Seekers."

"Six," Skydive said. "Superion makes six."

* * *

"I know, Air Raid, it sounds so gross! Thundercracker...I'd say it was worth it, but it really wasn't bad at all. I won't let Skywarp do it, though. He's just too big!"

* * *

"Three of them are gainfully employed. None of them are wandering around lost. All four cars are undented. Fireflight is getting his cast off right now. We don't have to call home for lunch money. And last night for the first time, Skydive cooked actual food in the actual oven."

"Hello to you too," Hot Spot said. "So why are you calling?"

"Because nothing bad is happening," Silverbolt said. "I thought we could have an actual conversation about something other than our brothers for once. Unless your brothers have...occured?"

Hot Spot was silent for a moment. "No. They haven't occurred," he said slowly. "When Ratchet and Wheeljack came out to fix Groove's thing, they pulled everyone else aside for a come-to-Jesus talk, and I don't know what that is but everyone has been behaving for almost a whole month."

"You didn't even notice," Silverbolt said, trying to not sound too concerned. He wasn't sure that his ego could take Ratchet and Wheeljack giving his brothers the come-to-Jesus talk and Hot Spot was a much better leader than Silverbolt. Maybe he should find out what a Jesus was and why coming to it made little brothers behave.

Hot Spot sighed. "No. Being human sucks. It really sucks, 'Bolt. It _objectively_ sucks."

"Hot Spot, are you okay?"

"Aside from being cut off from my brothers, three states away from almost everyone and half a country away from _you_, I'm helpless to stop any of the six terrible things I see every time I go so far as the grocery store, I'm only six feet tall and barely able to lift two hundred pounds and, Silverbolt, I don't know if it's different for the femmes but being human is just plain _exhausting. _I've been running at thirty percent max since the day we woke up."

Hot Spot was physically fine, Silverbolt told himself, because Ratchet would have definitely noticed if he wasn't. "Have you been fueling properly?"

"I am just as capable of taking care of myself as you are," Hot Spot pointed out.

Silverbolt couldn't stop himself from laughing. "I know. That's why I'm asking."

"Ratchet didn't say we were missing anything important. Wheeljack said we were missing coffee, and just between you and me, I did not expect that from him. What would Prime say if he knew our creators were drug addicts"

Hot Spot hadn't been built under exactly the same circumstances as Silverbolt. Most of the time, nobody really thought about it. But every once in a while, Hot Spot would say something that revealed just how much more mature the Aerialbot's Vector Sigma origin made them over the new-sparked Protectobots.

For a given definition of "mature," at least.

"Coffee isn't a drug," he said as gently as he could. "It's necessary for humans to reach peak operating performance."

"Caffeine is a drug," Hot Spot said.

"Well, it's not a bad drug," Silverbolt clarified. "Nobody's ever shot someone over coffee."

"I don't know, Ratchet might."

"That has nothing to do with coffee and everything to do with Ratchet."

Hot Spot had to concede the point.

"Besides, if it was so terrible why is there a coffee shop on nearly every corner?" Silverbolt was confident that Hot Spot was simply eating healthy. Skydive had tried to do that for a week, with much the same lethargy resulting.

"There's a liquor store across from most of them, though."

"I bet you, if you drink coffee, you'll feel better," Silverbolt said.

"And what are you staking, tempting me to drug use?"

It took a while to hammer out the terms of the bet, since they kept getting distracted by the negotiations of place, time, duration and dress code. Silverbolt wanted to be very specific on the details, since they were highly unlikely to be in the same place at the same time with the opportunity to pay the forfeit and thus this conversation was as close as they were going to get. It wasn't until Streetwise came home that Hot Spot regretfully excused himself, citing the phone bill but probably more in the need of a cold shower.

Silverbolt went to charge the phone, found Fireflight and Skydive bent over the computer. Some sixth big-brother sense told him something was up, some subtle clue as to the guilty rise of Skydive's eyebrows. Or the paper clutched in Fireflight's white-knuckled hand. He set down the phone, figuring that he'd probably drop it whenever he found out what fresh hell had spawned in the course of his conversation with Hot Spot. He really had to Google "come to Jesus."

"Apparently," Fireflight said, "I'm pregnant."


	10. 10

Title: I Think It's Going to Rain Today 10/Double-Freaking-Digits.  
Author: akisawana  
Genre: Melodrama/Family, with guest appearances by Romance, Angst, Crack, and Oh God, Didn't I Swear I'd Never Do Mpreg?  
Disclaimer: I am not making any money off of this, much to my mother's chagrin.  
Warnings: Y'know, if you made it through the previous nine chapters, there's not really much of a point, but just be aware that this is not a funny : I may have gotten annoyed and rewritten some previous chapters to make this work. I may have gotten annoyed and rewritten some previous chapters because they sucked. They still suck, and this still is a weaksauce chapter, the story as a whole is still melodramatic crack, but my point is I'm sorry if I exploded anyone's inbox.  
Summary: Freedom is the right of all sentient beings. Including the freedom to be tragically misinformed about sex, be epically wrong about love, and to make poor choices while grocery shopping.

* * *

"What's up, Silverbolt?" Wheeljack said when Perceptor handed him the phone. He was glad of the break; the collider beams were refusing to intersect at any point, much less the precise point they needed to for the third day in a row.

"Wheeljack," Silverbolt said, "Fireflight got pregnant and I am very far above my comfort zone with this."

"Okay, okay, let me go somewhere private," Wheeljack said, the wheels he no longer had spinning. "How did it happen?"

"Apparently," Silverbolt said, "everyone past puberty knows where babies come from. Humans not only reproduce sexually, they have no natural separation between recreation and procreation."

Wheeljack hadn't known that. As far as he knew, nobody on the Ark knew that. Someone had really divided by zero on that one, if it was common knowledge.

"I can't even apologize for this," Silverbolt continued, and his tone made Wheeljack shift into concerned-creator mode. It felt a little stiff; of all the mechs he and Ratchet had created, Silverbolt needed them the least often. When he did need them, though, it tended to be a doozy. "I should but, I can't. I don't even know how bad this is."

Wheeljack locked the door to the room he was sharing with Ratchet. "Well, there's no way to put the smoke back in the bomb, yeah, but you -and him- didn't do anything wrong. How much time do you have?"

"About eight and a half months," Silverbolt said. "He had no clue, it's been a whole month already and nobody had a clue. "

"So there's plenty of time, Silverbolt. You know, this isn't the first time this has happened."

"This isn't the first time one of your creations has called you to inform you that you're going to be a grandmother in the middle of a war? Who should I be congratulating?"

And people thought Slingshot was the one with the sharp tongue. It was a good sign, though, a sign that Silverbolt had moved past the initial panic. "Well, first there was the Dinobots, and then there was you and your brothers, and you were there when the Protectobots came along."

"Oh. I hadn't thought of it that way." Silverbolt sounded very young, very suddenly. "I'm sorry. It's, well, you know."

Wheeljack did know. "It's going to be okay, Silverbolt," he promised. "How's he doing?"

"He's fine," Silverbolt said. "Or he's in shock, but it's Fireflight so I'm pretty sure he's fine and I'm in shock."

"That sounds about right," Wheeljack said. Fireflight was possibly the jet the most like him, though he tried to see all his creations as individuals and not as spots on a continuum. Fireflight was, at the very least, the most laid-back part of Superion. "Can I talk to him?"

There was a brief conversation on the Aerialbot end of the line, then Fireflight said, "Hi Wheeljack. I'm growing a baby."

"Silverbolt told me," Wheeljack said. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm surprised, I guess. I didn't get horrible pain and a big mess last month but I thought I just miscounted, and that was really the only clue. I don't feel any different, really. I'm supposed to go somewhere called Planned Parenthood tomorrow, even though I didn't plan this."

"Before you go tomorrow," Wheeljack said, figuring that was as good an opening as any, "I want to tell you what my creator told me. It's not really the same, but the principles should be applicable to humans if not the specifics."

It was a good speech that his creator had given him about the three options. His creator had borrowed it out of an article he had read on how to talk to young mechs old enough to get in over their heads, but it was still a good speech to pass on to a creation of his own. He also asked Fireflight to repeat the main points back to him, because he _had_ created Fireflight and knew the Aerialbots as well as any outsider could. Wheeljack had to go over some points three or four times (apparently Air Raid was making faces at Fireflight) but eventually he was satisfied that Fireflight had a grasp of all that was important.

"Don't decide right away," Wheeljack said. "Give it time, yeah? And don't worry about what anyone else will think. Whatever you choose, at least six other Autobots have chosen the same thing."

"Do you regret it?" Fireflight asked. "Having us?"

Wheeljack was quiet for a moment. "I never regretted you, and I wouldn't change a thing if I could, but I've done two out of the three and I didn't regret that either."

"Which one didn't you do?"

"It doesn't matter," Wheeljack said, not wanting to influence Fireflight one way or another. "Think about it, and if you or your brothers need anything call me or Ratchet, yeah?

"I'll call you in a week anyways. Oh, everyone says hi." Fireflight added. "I was supposed to tell you that at the beginning."

"Give them all my love," Wheeljack said.

"I will. Talk to you in a week!"

Wheeljack hung up the phone and regarded it thoughtfully. He found Ratchet in the medbay, reminding Inferno that humans are, in fact, flammable. He didn't signal to Ratchet, mindful of the bombs he was about to drop. It would do no good to feed the Ark's gossip mill. Instead, he logged onto one of the workstations and waited for Ratchet to finish.

"What's happening?" Ratchet asked him, as soon as he had sent Inferno on his way. Wheeljack in one piece, in the medbay, and quiet had been signal enough.

The engineer had consulted the all-knowing Internet for more details on one of the bombs while he waited. "We were wrong" he began. "Birth control prevents pregnancy, not ensures it. Pregnancy has roughly a five percent chance of occurring per each unprotected sexual encounter. That's an average over the days of the menstrual cycle; some days the chance is as high as one in three."

"Nobody on the Ark is using protection," Ratchet said, looking faintly sick. "Because nobody on the Ark should have any transmissible diseases."

"It's possible to be pregnant and not know for an extended period of time," Wheeljack continued. "The average pregnancy lasts forty weeks so a surprise baby is very rare, but six to eight weeks is common."

He still had the other bomb to drop, and he wasn't sure how Ratchet was going to react. Pinging Primus on a robo-stick, he still wasn't sure of his own reaction. "And Fireflight found that out the hard way. He's pregnant."

Ratchet stared at him. Then he totaled something up on his fingers and swore. "Well," he said. "We need to call a staff meeting. Right now."

"C'mon Ratchet, it's not an emergency. He doesn't even know what he's going to do yet. We don't need to bring the brass down on him."

* * *

"If Fireflight didn't know for a month, and we didn't know the mechanics, how many other mechs in the last thirty-five weeks are in the same position? I'd really like to make sure that number is zero right _now_."

Thundercracker was not amused.

He hadn't seen Fireflight for almost a week. He hadn't seen _any_ Aerialbots for a week. Skywarp hadn't seen any either, and now _he_ was starting to avoid his wingmate. Even Starscream was cursing their mysterious disappearance, and was poised to do something undiplomatic. The only thing Thundercracker liked less than direct confrontation was cleaning up Starscream's messes, so he ended up laying an ambush for them in the stairwell. He was considering running into the apartment to grab a smoke when he heard Silverbolt and Slingshot coming up the steps. Slingshot was trying to convince Silverbolt to let him sell his car.

"I don't want to talk about it now, Slingshot." Silverbolt sounded like he hadn't slept for the whole week the Aerialbots had been missing. "That doesn't mean no. It means let's make one major life decision at a time, okay?"

"Major life decision?" Thundercracker asked. It was too good to pass up, though he had planned to start the conversation with "somebody better be dead or somebody will be." When Silverbolt brushed past him without saying anything, he grabbed the Autobot's arm. "What the hell is going on?"

"It's none of your business," Slingshot said, grabbing Thundercracker's arm in turn. "Let go, we're busy."

Silverbolt just shook Thundercracker off and continued up the stairs. Thundercracker followed him. "I'm _talking _to you." A good boom would knock Silverbolt right out of the sky, or just shooting at him -not hitting him, just getting his attention properly- being human sucked, Thundercracker thought for the ten thousandth time.

Silverbolt turned around and looked at him. He must have been taking secret lessons from Starscream. "I don't have time for you right now," he said.

Thundercracker wasn't the least bit intimidated, but in a few millenia, he might be. And Silverbolt was an Autobot; he would probably respond better to civility rather than see it as a sign of weakness. "We haven't heard so much as a beep from you lately."Silverbolt above him and Slingshot below him regarded him suspiciously. Some tiny human voice in the back of his head informed him they were considering just throwing him down the staircase. "Skywarp said Fireflight called in sick to work. Is everything alright?"

Silverbolt sighed. "Ask him," he said. "Come on in with us."

Skywarp was coming down the hall when they reached the top of the stairs. "They still haven't fixed the light in the elevator. Next time you break it, TC, find an easier fix."

"You broke the elevator?" Slingshot demanded.

"It's your fault for not coming out of the apartment," Thundercracker sniped.

"You could have _knocked._"

Silverbolt unlocked the door. "Let's not have this conversation in the hallway," he said, but it sounded an awful lot like "Let's go inside where I can throw everyone out a six-story window." Aerialbots sounding like Coneheads was funny. Aerialbots sounding like Megatron was alarming. They went inside anways.

Air Raid and Skydive were bent over the laptop. Fireflight was reading a book on the couch. None of them seemed to notice the Seekers, not until Skywarp sat on one side of Fireflight and put his hand on the Aerialbot's knee.

"Oh, hi," Fireflight said, smiling at him. "Silverbolt, you're back already?"

Thundercracker sat down hard at the realization that this week, with no-one to talk to when Skywarp was out and no-one to split a pizza with and no watching really bad movies about space wizards hadn't affected Fireflight at all. He had thought the kid had a crush on them, that he had thought them special, that he had wanted to be part of them. Had Thundercracker and Skywarp not recognized Autobot charity? But then, why had he interfaced with them? He didn't seem nearly as broken as Skywarp could be.

"I didn't tell them." Silverbolt was filling the coffee pot. "It should probably be you."

"We need to talk," Fireflight said to the Seekers. Thundercracker winced. Most Cybertronians avoided that particular phrase, since nobody could quite disprove that was what started the war.

"About what?"

"Well," Fireflight looked at his feet. "I'm six weeks pregnant."

"Oh," Skywarp said faintly, and hugged him.

It occurred to Thundercracker to ask Fireflight why he hadn't told them earlier. But he wasn't in the habit of asking questions when he wouldn't like the answers. "We'll help," he said. "Whatever you want, it's your choice, but we'll help." Privately, he wanted to tell Fireflight he had to keep it, wanted there to be some link between the three of them. It wasn't a terrible thing to wish for as long as he didn't say it out loud. Well, maybe it was, but he'd had a terrible week. He hadn't thought before they started this little adventure that it would be anything more than Skywarp getting his hands on boobs, but Skywarp had gotten attatched like he never did and finally being able to talk to anyone else after nearly a year besides Skywarp who knew who he was and would actually talk back, that alone was...Add in the temptation of somebody who actually _cared_ about him, even if there was a gap between what he thought and the truth, and. Well.

Thundercracker was, to use the human expression, up to his ass in alligators.

"We thought about it, and we're going to go through with it," Fireflight said.

"We?" Skywarp asked. "This is a 'we' thing? Is that like a brother thing?"

Air Raid shrugged. "It's a gestalt thing," he said.

Slingshot looked like he was going to say something, and nothing that came out of Slingshot's mouth was ever any good, so Thundercracker interrupted him. "You do realize that you have to be the one to tell Starscream," he said to Skywarp. "You are the only person here whose presence he will acknowledge, and that is just sad."

"That's not entirely true. He'd probably listen to, um." Skywarp couldn't come up with anyone. "Okay, so yeah. I'll tell him."

"Why will he only listen to Skywarp?" Slingshot asked.

"Don't take it personal," Thundercracker said. "He's just focused on something else right now, and when he gets like that there are only three ways to convey information to him. Skywarp, fusion cannon, and setting him on fire."

"Why can't you tell him?" Fireflight asked.

"Because he doesn't actually like me," Thundercracker said. "And since we don't have a fusion cannon handy, that really only leaves the two options."

"But setting him on fire only works when you do it," Skywarp said before the brothers could ask more questions about Starscream, Thundercracker, and their complete lack of a relationship.

Thundercracker punched him in the arm, not too hard, once for lying and twice for flinching. "I only set him on fire the once and he asked for it."

Fireflight pulled away from them. Air Raid and Slingshot grabbed each other's hands. Skydive was actually holding his breath. "What could _possibly_ even _Starscream _have done to deserve being _set on fire_?" Silverbolt asked.

"He asked for it," Thundercracker repeated. "He wanted to see if he was fireproof and there wasn't anyone else around he trusted in case he wasn't."

As one, the Aerialbots exhaled. "I thought he didn't like you," Air Raid said.

"He doesn't. It's Starscream, I can't explain it. About the only thing he likes is Skywarp, and that's probably some sort of Oslo Syndrome."

"Pain," Skywarp said. "Clearly, he likes pain. He should be in here. Where is he?"

"Why would he be in here?" Skydive asked.

"Because you kidnapped me on the way to the store and kitchen is finally empty enough he gave me grocery money."

"So when I raided your fridge three days ago and all that was in it was four bottles of water, a jar of peanut butter and half a tomato, that was not empty enough to shop?" Slingshot asked.

"There was half a tomato _and_ peanut butter, wasn't there?"

"Peanut butter doesn't even go in the fridge," Starscream said, walking in the unlocked door. He threw Skywarp's keys at his head. "Were you going to _walk_ to the store?"

"Fireflight's sparked," Skywarp said. "There's going to be a little one in June."

"I hope you didn't contribute," Starscream turned to raid the Aerialbot's fridge. "Nobody deserves your deoxyribonucleic acid. I have seen your code and I shudder to think how it translated."

"He's a boron compressor," Skywarp told the room at large. "That's how we know he cares."

"I really don't." Starscream said, assembling a sandwich out of leftovers. "Are you going to the store or not?"

"Do you have a list for me?"

"Can I trust you without one?" Starscream asked, then he pointed at Slingshot and Skydive. "You two have infected me with your terrible habit. And you _still_ owe me half a bottle of tequila."

Skywarp, meanwhile, was grinning. Thundercracker knew that grin. Last time he saw that, everyone to come out of the washracks that day had been a lovely shade of toxic green which didn't come off for _ages, _not helped by the fish in the paint booth. "You'd really give him that much freedom?" Thundercracker asked.

"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings, including the freedom to do stupid things," Starscream quoted. At five confused looks from the Aerialbots, he said, "What?"

"I never thought I would hear you quote Optimus Prime," Skydive said.

"If the Prime is saying that, old Nova must be very disappointed."

* * *

Notes: Yes, I make shit up. I am still technically canon compliant, for a given definition of canon that includes Nova Prime. The number is not zero. I am criminally bad at math. Apparently Snopes does not exist on Cybertron. Two for flinching is a perfectly cromulent game. By "Oslo Syndrome" he means "Stockholm Syndrome." English is hard, give them a break. For "toxic green" see "Constructicons." Thanks for reading.


	11. 11

Title: I Think It's Going to Rain Today 11/OMGWTFBBQ  
Author: akisawana  
Genre: Melodrama/Family, with guest appearances by Romance, Angst, Crack, and Oh God, Didn't I Swear I'd Never Speculate On The Reproductive Methods Of Giant Alien Robots?  
Disclaimer: There's an argument to be made this is legal under "fair use." I'd probably _lose,_ but the argument could be made.  
Warnings: I was an English major in my misspent : Somewhere, my high school English teacher is getting ready to lecture me on pacing. Also, I can no longer pretend this isn't G1/IDW fusion.  
Summary: It takes a Decepticon, on average, seventeen days to grasp the full ramifications of organic reproduction. That's too long for Starscream.

* * *

Starscream had known a mech once, Bitstream, who had a passing interest in sociology.

Bitstream's creator, wanting a family, had sought out another mech to help him differentiate a portion of his own spark enough to create an entirely new being. Once the frequency was stable, Bitstream's spark simply budded off his father's into a waiting protoform. When Starscream's creator, on the other hand, had wanted to expand his family, he had taken the protoform to Vector Sigma to be sparked. Families had started out as a fad during one of Cybertron's more organophillic phases, but it had survived so long that few mechs remembered they weren't part of Cybertronian design or that spark frequency synchronization had been artificially developed to attempt budding, not to make interfacing more exciting.

Families, especially ones with only one or two creators were expensive, though, and under Nova Prime an increasing number of mechs (like Skywarp) were being raised in batches. Unlike most organic races, for whom family was encoded in their DNA, such orphans of Vector Sigma thrived just as well raised in large groups as they did with singular attention (except Skywarp.) The slow erosion of the family unit was seen by most as a result of the war.

Bitstream had held a different theory. He would expound, when overcharged, how Cybertronians were social creatures who needed _some sort_ of tribe. Without the financial means to create or adopt a sparkling, mechs would instead build tight-knit networks of friends. While that was a perfectly acceptable state of affairs on the individual level, as less and less Cybertronians were distracted by guiding young mechs through everyday life, more and more had the energy to become involved in the sciences, the arts, the military...and politics. Then the batch mechs starting coming of age, bringing to pub discussions a sharp desire for individual recognition, plenty of practice at self-advocacy, and an ever-so-slightly increased ability to play well with others.

And so, said Bitstream, the revolution was sparked.

Starscream was thinking more of Bitstream's conception than his theory of war as he flipped through the book Fireflight had abandoned on the couch. While "pregnant" was close enough in meaning to the now-unpronounceable word to describe the budding process, "sparked" was much closer, and yet only Skywarp was using that word. Starscream knew that humans, like all organics, maintained a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism -that they grew, and that they reproduced sexually, which put him two up on, apparently, everyone else in the damn room. That was all he had known, but he was a scientist still, and that came with a certain amount of curiosity.

"Pregnant" was not close enough, he discovered, it was a terrible process, and just from this very basic book he knew he would have to shelve his reverse-transmorgrifier for quite possibly the next twelve months and try to find some way to delete the entire experience of watching someone go through _that _from his memory banks.

Still, while this would set back one of his plans, it would certainly boost the timeline of another. Starscream spent half the night at his computer researching, alternately fascinated and nauseated by the whole organic process. Then he closed the laptop and thought, about his plans and his allies still with Megatron and his wingmates and what he had to work with in front of him. Only when Skywarp sat next to him and waved coffee under his nose did he realize the sun had risen.

"You have no idea what you volunteered yourself for," he told his poor, innocent, _stupid_ wingmate.

"It's like budding, isn't it?" Skywarp asked. "Only accidental. And apparently takes a lot longer."

"No," Starscream said. "It's more like a parasite, and there are a lot more side effects than with budding. I don't want to scare you," Which was a lie; he wanted Skywarp very scared. The more afraid Skywarp was, the more seriously he would take it, the less likely he would upset Starscream's plans. "But from what I've read from people who went through it, it's absolutely terrible. There is swelling and vomiting and all sorts of pain" Whatever else was wrong with Skywarp's processor, he had a boundless and vivid imagination, so Starscream let him fill in the details. "He'll probably hate you by the end for causing this. As for the end itself..." Words very rarely failed Starscream, but parturition would have been hard enough to describe to anyone, much less someone who needed as many monosyllabic words as possible. He opened the laptop and played the video he had saved for just this discussion. "This is the _good_ outcome."

Skywarp paled, swallowed, and swore. "That's disgusting," he said.

"Yes, it is." His point made, Starscream closed the laptop. "And it doesn't end there."

"How could it be worse -that looks fatal!"

"Are you familiar with the concept of infancy?"

Skywarp, as Starscream had guessed, was not familiar with that particular concept. He was used to mechs sparked fully-grown, who needed only a relatively short period of guidance before they could be loosed into general society. Hearing that someone near him was expecting a child, Skywarp assumed that meant soon there would be another Aerialbot around, a bit naive but nowhere near as dependent as an actual infant. Starscream knew this, and long experience had taught him how to lead Skywarp gently down the halls of understanding.

That didn't mean he was the least bit gentle about describing Skywarp's impending fatherhood. "It won't be so bad," he said at the end, patting Skywarp's arm as condescendingly as he could manage. "Not with seven of you together."

Skywarp snagged Starscream's coffee and drank it to give his hands something to do. "Aren't you going to help?"

"Of course not." Starscream took his coffee back. "I have more important things to do than clean up your mess."

"My mess?" Skywarp asked, jumping up. "How is this _my _mess? _You_ didn't slagsucking tell me this could happen, _your_ idiot wingmate was the one who thought it was a genius idea, and I certainly _was not consulted_ at any point for _any of this_ rusted pile of _scraps _so why is it my Primus-damned _problem_?"

Starscream was somewhat amused to recognize that as nearly word-for-word what he had said to Megatron the first time he had been called to task for not preventing one of Skywarp's no-nearly-rare-enough flashes of brilliance that had ended in three broken windows, a mock dogfight in hanger bay seven, and a missing corpse (except that had been cheeky and fun shenanigans, and back then Starscream was telling the truth so on at least two counts the exact opposite of now.) He couldn't help smiling, even after Skywarp punched him.

And that was just so predictably _Skywarp_ that Starscream laughed.  
"What, by shiny Cybertron," Skywarp punched him again, "is so _funny_?"

Starscream kept laughing and didn't answer. By his calculations this was at least a four-punch breakdown, and Skywarp punched him twice more.

"Fix it," he said, peeling the paint off the walls with descriptions of Starscream's helpfulness, ancestry, sexual predilections and current state of hygiene. Once his creativity had been exhausted, far earlier than Starscream expected, he hit the Air Commander one last time and sat down heavily. "Fix it. I don't care how, just fix it."

"I'm flattered by your confidence, but I can't," Starscream said. He probably _could _make it all go away, but he had a plan and standards lying around somewhere."It won't be so bad."

Skywarp buried his head in his hands. "How can you say that? It can't get _worse._"

"The Aerialbots, they're not actually expecting you to help. They're expecting you to run away." He didn't want Skywarp to think about that too hard, lest his wingmate question his sudden psychic abilities. "So anything you do to help, they'll appreciate. The more you help them, the more they'll like you." Half the Aerialbots always had half a crush on Skywarp, and everyone knew Skywarp had always loved attention regardless of the source. What most mechs (including Thundercracker and Skywarp himself) didn't know was that the only thing Skywarp liked more than attention was respect.

It had been long observation, the careful assembling of countless clues, and the Aerialbots themselves that lead Starscream to discover that little quirk, effort few would put into any single mech. Among the Decepticons, though Skywarp never lacked for attention and his battle record kept anyone from _losing _respect for him, few people thought about him unless he was actually standing in front of them. Even fewer thought he had anything to contribute to the cause but teleporting and a steady shot. Most of the Nemesis, when they thought about him at all, saw him as useful but ultimately replaceable. It wasn't until the Aerialbots came around, thinking Skywarp was Primus on two wings, that the last piece of a millennial-old puzzle slipped into place in the back of Starscream's processor.

When they crossed paths again, reeling from betrayal and ruin, and the Aerialbots had (almost) as one shrugged and offered him ice cream, the teleporter was lost.

"So what am I going to do?"

"Go over there, play cards or whatever it is you do all day, and be disturbingly cheerful like you always are. They've been stewing for a week and probably need some cheering up before they start blaming you. I'll take care of the rest of the details, including telling Thundercracker."

"And that's all? Pretend like everything's normal?"

"Have I ever led you wrong before?"

Skywarp was forced to admit that no, there was not a single instance he could recall. Which just proved that Skywarp didn't have a very good memory. Still, for a long time now Starscream had tried to keep Skywarp in one piece; Skywarp was the only one who had never let him down.

* * *

In three words, Starscream could sum up everything he's learned about life: it goes on.

He couldn't afford to waste too much time on situations he couldn't control, so he moved to one that he could. In Dallas, there was a man who for fifty dollars would mail letters to wherever Swindle was in the world. Starscream sat at the table with pencil and paper and wrote an absolutely uncrackable message to the Combaticon.

_ Truck broke down. Have buyer with sudden need. How fast can you get in touch w/ supplier? DHS update coming by end of month._

The coded phrases would alert Swindle that the reverse-transmogrifier project was put on hold but the _other_ thing he was working on was now accelerated. It would also ask the Combaticon if he could still count on half of Cybertron back home to support him with a minimum of questions and for Megatron's current location. He trusted Swindle (within very specific limits,) but even if the message was discovered and the code broken, all Swindle would be able to leak was that Starscream was building his own reverse-transmogrifier and plotting to bring troops from Cybertron to support his next bid for control of the Decepticons. Starscream didn't think the ruse of the Dallas postmark would fool even the dumbest of Decepticons, but without an electronic trail to follow, they wouldn't be able to track them past Texas.

Swindle didn't know Starscream's end game. Nobody would ever guess Starscream's end game, the hole card that he had held in reserve since Dabola. It was a desperate gamble, only half because of the riskiness inherent. Not only would he have just the single opportunity, he couldn't hedge his bets but had to go all-in. If he failed, he wouldn't merely remain as Air Commander, or be demoted, or face exile. His punishment would be worse than any he'd ever survived before, so bad he scarcely dared contemplate it. If he succeeded, though, he'd rule _all_ of Cybertron outright, not simply the right to continue the war with the Autobots on his terms and finish with an empire of dead mechs and ashes.

It was so much easier to overthrow Megatron when Soundwave couldn't warn him.

* * *

Skywarp was best led gently down the halls of understanding. Thundercracker was best handed the bomb and shoved out the airlock.

So when his other idiot wingmate came in the door, Starscream opened his laptop and said, "This is what is going to happen to the Aerialbot you're in love with."

"I'm not in love with any Aerialbot," Thundercracker said. He may have even believed it. "I need money for cigarettes."

Starscream didn't say anything, just pressed play.

Thundercracker, much like Skywarp, utterly failed to conceal his disgust. Unlike Skywarp, he caught on to the implications without needing Starscream to explain in small words. "So when I volunteered to help," he said. "they're going to think I _meant_ it."

"Did you think this was just a poorly written episode of To Reach A Star?"

"He never said he was going to keep it around," Thundercracker pointed out calmly.

"He never said he wasn't, and then you volunteered the _both_ of you to help. You _encouraged_ him."

"I need a cigarette," Thundercracker said. Starscream looked at him, surprised. He hadn't expected to have to go into quite as much detail as with Skywarp, but his idiot wingmate was more quixotical than anyone with his sense of self-preservation had a right to be. Starscream had expected at least a token protest that Thundercracker had meant what he said, or that he wasn't going to back down just because he lacked vital information, or some sort of reaction at all.

But mind-altering chemicals weren't really things Thundercracker used to indulge in all that often before. "My wallet's on the table," Starscream said. "And Thundercracker? When humans are born, they're _infants._"

Thundercracker shrugged, took two bills from Starscream's wallet, and left.

Starscream locked the door behind him. Thundercracker would be back in a few days, once he had finished stewing, or so Starscream hoped. Since the day Starscream met him, Thundercracker had been prone to fits of idealism, brooding, and over-reacting, but something about their current situation had elevated his usual tendency towards melodrama to quiet near-insanity. Whatever it was, Starscream was half-flailing without Thundercracker quietly acting as the trine's collective voice of reason. Not that he did a very good job at the best of times, but mechs Starscream trusted unequivocally were in short supply.

He closed out that horrible video that he had now watched three times too many, and purged it from his history just to make sure. He tried to work on his reverse-transmogrifier, but something kept nagging at the back of his brain. Thundercracker hadn't wanted money for cigarettes because of what Starscream told him. He hadn't even acknowledged that Starscream had told him directly when they hadn't been on speaking terms for three months now. Thundercracker had come in for cigarette money and though he had registered, even participated in the conversation, he hadn't reacted towards anything but the cigarette money. No, Thundercracker was fixating. Two days ago, he had fixated on the sudden quiet a lack of Aerialbots had fomented. Last night he had fixated on keeping that one Aerialbot around. Now he was fixating on cigarette money. It wasn't about the cigarette money or the quiet or even the Aerialbot that he had _too_ fallen in love with (of course he had, it was part of the plan, and the fact that he didn't know it was part of the plan just meant he wasn't going to screw it up.) It was about predicting correctly. Anyone who flew learned to predict things correctly or they ended up so much smashed metal.

Starscream started working on a totally unrelated plan, letting his fingers do the work while he considered some more. Skywarp hadn't understood and punched him. Thundercracker had been flat wrong and barely twitched a wing. Skywarp was more volatile than Thundercracker, always, but surely the situation called for something more than a shrug and a cigarette? An ad on his computer screen caught his eye, and made him realize the apartment had been music free for a week. He hadn't really noticed since his wingmates were out so often now, and he hadn't really been paying as much attention to his clingy, idiotic, strangely useful wingmates nearly as closely as he usually did, not when there were five Aerialbots around to do it for him. No music, fixating, ambushes in the stairwells was almost normal but not as a first line of attack, Starscream added them all up and did not like the results.

Thundercracker, the reliable one, the key to the first stage of his Primus-damned plan, was out Primus-knew-where doing Primus-knows-what throwing Primus-alone-knew how many exceptions because Starscream hadn't bothered to factor in the obvious effects of _months_ (and he wasn't thinking how many, or he'd be right in crazytown along with his wingmate) without flying. Starscream had no way to track him, no way to contact him, and less than no clue of what he was _thinking_. The whole plan was dropping like air pressure up a mountain and Starscream couldn't do a damn thing to save it.

(and that was Starscream's only concern, the plan, because he hated the brother he didn't have.)

* * *

"He's still not home," Skywarp whined. "It's been three _days._ Where is he?"

Starscream shrugged, not looking up from his laptop. "He'll be back soon. He can't have gone far on forty dollars."

"Why'd you have to chase him away anyways?"

"_You_ were the one who failed to inform me he was two steps away from kernel panic." That wasn't really a fair burden to lay on Skywarp; Starscream had missed it too.

"Do you think he's sleeping in his car?" Skywarp threw himself on the couch and dropped his feet on Starscream's lap. "Your plan isn't working. I don't think they care"

Starscream picked up his wingmate's feet and pushed them to the floor. "It's only been three days. Have they even noticed?"

"But I want him back _now._"

"Tough."

"Can you make them care?"

Primus, did Thundercracker have to take Skywarp's initiative with him? "Go find that one Aerialbot and be miserable on _his_ legs. That ought to make them care."

"Do _you_ even care? Am I the only mech in the entire maldito universe who cares?"

And really, Starscream didn't. This was far from the first time Thundercracker had disappeared off in a snit, and Skywarp always worried, and Starscream never did. When no security officers showed up on his doormat in the first forty-eight hours, Starscream figured that Thundercracker was at least paying enough attention to the world at large to not drive into a tree. That still left Starscream worrying about Skywarp being so distracted he drove into a tree, but Skywarp had all the spatial perception one would expect from someone who could teleport instantaneously away from anything in his flight path who was also trapped in an unfamiliar form missing most of his senses. Starscream had maxed out worrying about Skywarp and trees all the way back in Dallas. "Busy, Skywarp. Go away."

Skywarp ignored him. "Can't you just make him come back?"

Starscream stood up. "Congratulations, you've successfully annoyed me into doing something." He was halfway across the hall before Skywarp had scrambled off the couch and caught up.

Slingshot was home, which gave Starscream an idea. He tapped a few keys on his laptop, opening a file, and deposited the computer in Slingshot's lap.

"I found you a job," he said.

The three Aerialbots in the living room and Skywarp gave him mixed looks of confusion and suspicion. "A job." Slingshot drew the word out like he'd never heard it before. "You found me a job."

"I found you a job," Starscream said, "that you will _like._" Until Thundercracker gathered the courage to show his slagging face, Starscream was going ahead with Plan B. He'd never had a Plan B before. It was surprisingly effective.

Slingshot skimmed the text on the screen, his progress measurable by the height of his eyebrows. "You think I'd like lying on the Internet for money?" The ungrateful little fragger's manifolds were almost as big as Starscream's, and he couldn't help liking the Aerialbot for it.

"It's not really lying now, is it? They could be right."

"Why?" Skydive -or possibly Air Raid, Starscream couldn't tell those two apart in _proper _form, asked.

Starscream huffed. "Did I or did I not make you Seekers? Am I or am I not responsible for the welfare of my Seekers?"

""S true," Skywarp put in from Fireflight's lap. "He's an obnoxious afthead but he takes care of his own. Except for TC." Starscream could have kissed him for helping, except one, kissing Skywarp wasn't ever going to happen and two, did Skywarp really have to drag the Aerialbots into round infinity plus one of Thundercracker Can Take Care Of Himself, When Did You Become The Mature One? Two of the Aerialbots started quizzing Skywarp on exactly what he meant by that, getting the story of the three-day cigarette road trip, and wondering when, exactly, Slingshot had become a Seeker.

Slingshot stared at Starscream like he'd never seen the Air Commander before, then very quietly said, "Thank you."

Starscream waved it off and poured himself some coffee. "You owe me half a bottle of tequila," he said.

* * *

Notes: Damn, I failed Heinleining 101 with the fury of a thousand suns. Starscream thinks five times faster than anyone else, seriously. You try describing reproduction to a giant alien robot. The phrase "Skywarp's impending fatherhood" is half the reason I write this fic. At one point, Starscream quotes Robert Frost. "Alcanzar una estrella" is a real telenovela that I have never seen and make no claims about having episodes with wanna-be deadbeat dads. Forty bucks will buy you a lot of cigarettes. Yes, that means you can basically take everything TC has ever told anyone in this fic and throw it out the window. Kernel panic is a real thing that I am really too proud about understanding. Thanks for reading.


	12. Chapter 12

Title: I Think It's Going to Rain Today 12/?  
Author: akisawana  
Genre: Drama/Family, with guest appearances by Romance, Angst, Crack, and Oh God, Where Did All These Words Come From?  
Disclaimer: I cannot properly cite my research because I've forgotten APA style.  
Warnings: There is a tragic lack of dead bodies here. Wanton cruelty to the common comma.  
Notes: This probably should have been the second half of last chapter, which is why writing serially sucks.  
Summary: Everyone reacts to news differently.

* * *

"So I just got an interesting phone call from Ratchet about birth control."

Silverbolt sighed. "I'm sorry, Hot Spot, I was going to call you but things got a little hectic around here."

There was dead silence from Hot Spot.

"I'm not pregnant," Silverbolt clarified. "Fireflight is."

"Ratchet was non-specific about how the matter was brought to his attention," Hot Spot said. "You're going to have to repeat the last."

"When Fireflight went to get his cast off, they told him he was pregnant because apparently that's what sex is for."

"We dodged the bullet, then," Hot Spot said.

Silverbolt thought about how small the window of opportunity Fireflight had, and the amount of experimentation he and Hot Spot had done, and thanked Primus _he_ wasn't pregnant himself. "You could say that."

"Has he decided what to do?" Hot Spot asked. Few things stunned him for long.

"When he's reminded that he's pregnant, he wants to keep it," Silverbolt said. It wasn't _strictly_ true; Silverbolt was sure after the first time Fireflight was just trying to make a joke. "Everyone else agrees it would be 'radical,' even Slingshot, and he _hates _Fireflight's boyfriend."

"Ah," Hot Spot said, carefully neutral.

"It's his choice. I'm not going to make it for him. If he wants to go through with this, I won't stop him."

"But you don't want him to have a baby in the middle of a war?" Hot Spot guessed.

"It's not that it would be a wartime baby. Wheeljack and Ratchet have had plenty of wartime babies. _We're_ wartime babies. And if he's going to have a wartime baby, now is the time to do it. It's that...he's going to have a baby, Hot Spot."

"Silverbolt," Hot Spot said in the same voice he'd use when taking Silverbolt up high, when talking him down, "I'm not one of your brothers."

"We bought a book about what to expect, and I looked a little on the Internet and so much could go wrong," Silverbolt kept his voice as calm as he could. "For both of them."

"What can go wrong?" he asked, and it wasn't rhetorical like it usually was. "I know you have a list. Tell me everything on it."

Silverbolt did indeed have a list, and he recited it to Hot Spot. Most of the list was a valid concern. About half of what was left he knew was too rare to really happen but couldn't help worrying about anyways. Some of it he didn't even understand. Not enough of it, when he tried to put it in words, was just too ridiculous. At the end, Silverbolt hadn't let go of any of his burden. He just felt like he'd landed after a transoceanic flight.

"Primus, Silverbolt," Hot Spot said. "Do you want me to come out? Say the word, and I'll bring my brothers. I think that would be a good idea."

"No," Silverbolt said, "we'll be fine." Silverbolt didn't have the cycles to spare to calculate all the ways having the Protectobots in town could go wrong.

"It's not a big deal," Hot Spot said. "Blades could help Slingshot circumcise Fireflight's boyfriend."

Silverbolt laughed, partly out of surprise at _that_ coming out of Hot Spot's mouth and partly at the image of Skywarp refusing to let go of Fireflight with his pants around his ankles. Thundercracker needed to come back soon; the other Seeker was in serious danger of having his own nervous breakdown. Or possibly growing up. "You do know those don't grow back, right?"

"I noticed that you haven't mentioned him once," Hot Spot pointed out. "If Streetwise and Blades talk to him, it's not like Fireflight can get mad at you."

"He doesn't know yet. He doesn't even know about the transformation," Silverbolt said, lying outright to Hot Spot for the first time in his life. He told himself that he didn't feel nauseous at the thought. He told himself it was necessary. He told himself that he _would_ tell everyone about the Seekers. Just as soon as he knew what they were up to. Silverbolt may have been the next thing to new-sparked, but Starscream must be up to _something._

* * *

When Thundercracker woke up with the parking brake lodged between his ribs for the third afternoon in a row, his first thought was maybe he had made a mistake or two along the way. His second, third, and fourth thoughts were about coffee, his fifth and sixth a smoke, and his seventh was how terribly uncontrollable being human was.

Maybe he could blame this on the fragile chemistry of the human brain. He'd probably get away with it, too, as long as nobody remembered the time with the solar needle. Or the time Bumblebee had tried to talk him into switching sides. Or what happened after that one time with the bomb.

So he wouldn't get away with it.

He hadn't meant to run away again. There had just been too much happening at once for him to think through, especially with Skywarp in his ear, and he had just wanted a cigarette and five goddamn minutes of quiet, was that too much to ask for? Around Skywarp, apparently. It wasn't really running away, though. Thundercracker had made all sorts of strategic advances to the rear in his long warrior career, he could recognize one when he saw it. And he wasn't running away. He was just regrouping.

And if it took a while, well, he wasn't the one with the brilliant idea to fire a weapon of unknown origin and effect at _anybody_. This whole thing wasn't his fault. That wouldn't stop Starscream from holding it against him, but Starscream had an amazing ability to hold any and everything against him.

None of that wasn't exactly true, and he knew it, but he pretended he didn't because if he didn't he would have to think more and he'd already been off thinking for three days. Skywarp would be climbing the walls.

Fireflight didn't care.

Starscream might not care. It depended entirely on how annoying Skywarp had been in his absence. Thundercracker estimated their wingleader to regard Skywarp somewhere between "going to get shot" and "too pathetic to waste the ammo." And thinking about Skywarp getting shot just lead to thoughts of Megatron that Thundercracker did not want to think.

At least maybe he wouldn't write Megatron creepy love letters anymore. Thundercracker could live without monogamy if he had to -he wasn't thrilled about it, but he'd managed for this long- but something about the way Megatron had treated Skywarp had always, always gotten under his skin.

Thundercracker didn't want to think about Skywarp. He had calculated the amount of time he spent thinking about Skywarp once and came up with "too much to be healthy and borderline disturbing." To avoid thinking about Skywarp, he very carefully started his car and counted blue cars between the grocery store parking lot he had slept in and the movie theater.

There wasn't really anything worth seeing at the theater, but he bought a ticket with the last of his money anyways. He had to go back to the apartment that was most assuredly not home sooner or later and ask Starscream for more. He was calculating everyone's schedules to be sure return when no-one was likely to be there when he showed up when he caught sight of the back of Air Raid's head.

Thundercracker ducked into the men's room. Not his proudest moment, especially when Air Raid came in not half a minute later.

"Why are you in a movie theater with a woman?" he asked the Aerialbot. Maybe he could distract him.

Air Raid shrugged. "I'm on a date. How long have you been lurking in the bathroom?"

"Do your brothers know you're on a date?"

"Of course not. Where have you been?"

Thundercracker changed tactics. Deflection worked on Skywarp's clone about as well as on the original model. "I was thinking."

"You think too much."

"And you don't think enough." Thundercracker hoped he could get Air Raid to go away before he had to make the younger jet cry.

"Everyone's been really, you know," Air Raid said, waving his hand in the ancient Cybertronian signal for "worry unbecoming an active-duty soldier." Thundercracker wondered where he learned it. "Fireflight keeps forgetting he's pregnant. Skydive's starting to threaten your life for messing up his Euchre rotations. Starscream found Slingshot a job which apparently translates into being worried, don't ask me how. _Silverbolt's_ been worrying and I'm not even sure he _likes_ you."

"Didn't Starscream tell you I do this all the time? I realize you wouldn't have guessed it, being more on the problem side of the equation, but sometimes a mech likes to go someplace he can complete a full thought without being interrupted by one inanity or another." Air Raid was blocking the door. To leave the room and the conversation, Thundercracker would have to come within his reach.

"He did," Air Raid said, searching his pockets. "Two days ago. Then later he said that since we had no way to make sure you hadn't created modern art from the marriage of your car and a tree or suffered a fatal collapse under the weight of your existential despair we might as well keep an eye out for your rusted carcass."

That did sound almost like something Starscream would say, except Starscream hadn't cared about Thundercracker in millions of years. "Go tell him that unlike some idiot cascades of glitches, I can take care of myself."

"I can smell you from here, and it is an intoxicating mix of bluff and fail." Air Raid apparently had been looking for a permanent marker. "And I do mean "intoxicating." You should at least come back to base long enough for a shower."

"I am rather fond of living. I'm not going anywhere near your scary brother."

"Oh, he's just worried. Like everyone else. Skywarp is on some sort of weird milkshake hunger strike."

That didn't make sense to Thundercracker at first. Skywarp wasn't one for self-denial. Even when they'd first been reformatted and he was rebelling against solid food -oh. "Maybe you should go tell them I'm fine and I'll come home when they cool off."

"No," Air Raid said, scrawling something on the automatic hair dryer. "One, I'm not lying to people who know where I recharge. Two, now is the perfect time to come home. They'll all be so happy you're in one piece they'll forget to be mad."

"What are you writing?" Thundercracker asked. It was that or yell, "Look! A clever distraction!" and he was fairly certain a mech would only fall for that once a lifetime.

"It doesn't matter," Air Raid put the marker away. "You're really bad about being cared about."

"I seem to recall you threatening to kill me. Recently," Thundercracker reminded him.

"That was then, this is now where you're not a jerk. Unless you don't come back with me, I tell everyone I saw you, and then you are definitely a jerk. And then Slingshot kills you because he still hates you."

Air Raid had him pretty well pinned down, there.

"Why, by shiny Cybertron, are you being such a pain in the skidplate about this?" Air Raid asked, flapping his arms almost to takeoff. "Do I need to hug you and promise everything will be all right? I will, if that's what it takes, but I would really rather not in a public restroom."

Few mechs could stand in Air Raid's way. Thundercracker had never been one of them.

"What about your date?" Thundercracker asked.

"Fireflight's more important," Air Raid said. "Let's go."

* * *

So it's been a few chapters since a major hiatus, and this fic's flaws are, unfortunately, fatal. I've actually known this for a while, but I didn't want to leave everyone hanging in Offscreen Inertia. You, the person who presumably wants to be reading about either epic cross-faction romance or the exploration of the human experience, deserve better. I'm not quite deleting this fic, but I am doing a major rewrite and repost under a different title. I always hated this title anyways.


End file.
